I conducted a phone interview Wednesday with The Big Show, who will face CM Punk, Luke Gallows and Joey Mercury in a handicap match Sunday at WWE's SummerSlam pay-per-view.
As one of WWE's most tenured performers, are you someone that younger guys seek out for advice? How do you approach your role as a veteran?
I approach the veteran role very quietly. A lot of guys have the ability to be the veteran: they set policy, they set tone in the locker room; that's never been my idea. I don't try to go out and seek attention. "Oh, I'm a veteran, I've been around 15 years, I've been through mud and blood and crud." I always just try to go out and have the best performance I can have, do whatever I need to do for the company, for the WWE Universe, and always be an open ear for the guys, whether they're a rookie or a veteran. If somebody wants to talk, I listen and I give my honest opinion. It may not be the right answer, but it's my honest opinion. That's the thing about this business. You can take advice and take opinions from people but you still have to work it out and filter it out in your own brain and apply it how you need to be successful.
What is the best piece of advice you could give a young guy in the business?
Always keep your mind open. You have to evolve and absorb everything around you – from your other superstars, from the audience, how our product changes. You have to keep an open mind and be willing to grow and not get set on doing something one way. There are so many different ways to do our business, to perform, and there's something for everyone out there that wants to be successful. You just have to be open to find it.
Back in the territorial days, guys would move from territory to territory to stay fresh, but that's no longer the case in the era of the big companies. You've been with WWE for the better part of the past 12 years. How much of a challenge is it to be in one place for that long and not get stale?
It's a tremendous challenge. Quite frankly, I hear all the time from the powers that be, "Oh, we put you on TV too much, we overexpose you. You're such a unique attraction. We should really capitalize on that. By the way, you're working 304 days this year." [laughs]. The only thing that comes in is the fact that sometimes the roster dictates with guys being injured or younger guys not able to step up to the plate quite yet because they're still learning their way on television how the system works that to push the product you rely on your veterans. I'm thankful for the fact that they appreciate my work enough to consider me a guy that they can count on to go out and work hard and deliver a good match. I've survived this long and I'm in a pretty good place. I like working and performing and hopefully that will be my contribution to the business – that I'll actually be considered a pretty good worker for a big guy, so we'll see.
Have you started to think at all about life after wrestling? Do you see yourself still wrestling to some extent into your fifties?
I think I want to stay in the ring as long as I can competitively. Right now I'm able to work and I can handle this 300-day-a-year schedule and the once-a-month-trip overseas, whether it's Mexico, Europe, Japan, South America or wherever we're going. I'm 38 now. Hopefully they'll keep me around for a few more years and then we'll see where my career leads from there. Perhaps I'll do more stuff with WWE Films as it starts to grow, which I'm sure it's going to. If the younger superstars step up to the plate and there might not be as much room for someone like me, then maybe I'll move to more of an attraction role and more of an ambassador role. Right now I'm just staying positive. I enjoy the work and if I can still compete at this level, I'll do this until I'm 50 without a doubt. If I can't compete at a positive level then you have to step down.
You mentioned your work with WWE Films. Tell me about the comedy you did called "Knucklehead." That's going to be a theatrical release, correct? When can we expect to see that?
It's going to have a limited theatrical release – I think it's Oct. 22 – and then it'll be on DVD. I'm pretty proud of the project. When I first got the script a couple years ago it was a Rated-R script – it was meant to be a lot more adult humor. I worked with [WWE Studios executive vice president] Mike Pavone and we really wanted to do a family movie. There's enough stuff out there that's funny that an adult can go see, but I have a 12-year-old daughter, so I actually want to go to a movie with her and have a laugh where it doesn't involve a talking animal or a cartoon, because that's about all that's out there for adults to go see movies with their kids. I worked really hard on "Knucklehead," put a lot of heart into it, and it's got some fantastic actors. … It's a nice little story, a nice little adventure. A guy has lived in an orphanage his whole life, he's 35 years old, he's this monstrous man who in the right era probably would have been swinging a battleaxe and been a conqueror, but instead he's humble, scared to death of the head nun, and his best friend is a 12-year-old kid. It's kind of like "Kingpin" meets "Waterboy" meets "Fight Club" meets "The Apple Dumpling Gang." So there you go.
Staying on the subject of family entertainment, not long after you got into wrestling the content started becoming raunchier. Now we've seen it swing the other way. What are your personal feelings on WWE as a company making the move back to a more family-friendly direction?
I think family friendly is the smartest way to go. There's so much reality-based crap out there. Sorry, pardon my language. That's real family friendly – crap [laughs]. I just get frustrated. The American family, families in general, need to find more things they can do together. Coming to our live event shows as a family is a great experience as far as the dollars you spend. It's quality family entertainment. Families need more family time. Kids are into cell phones and texting, and mom and dad are into this and doing that, but you can pull together as a family and put the PDA devices down and go see stuff together and enjoy it, and there's something for everyone. Now that we've become more family friendly, we're encouraging more positive sponsors – Gillette, National Guard, Subway and 7-Eleven – and it's making our product just better all the way around. Doing things more family friendly can sometimes be harder. It's always easy to take an easy way out and do something that would be wild and reckless and attitude, but it's a shortcut. You have to work harder to be proper, and I like what we're doing, I really do. I like the direction we're taking the company with our international exploits and the countries we're going to and the lives that we're touching. It's definitely a product that I'm proud to walk down the ramp and be a part of. I'm a father, so I consider that stuff now. When I was younger, OK, maybe I wasn't that concerned about it. I was into seeing all the crazy stuff, but my values have shifted, just like all us – we have kids, our life shifts.
You were one half of two pretty entertaining tag teams over the past year or so, one with Chris Jericho and the other with The Miz. Now I can picture you and Jericho – two established veterans who both came up in WCW – hanging out backstage and putting your heads together to come up with stuff, but you and Miz were a true odd couple. I just can't picture you and The Miz hanging out together. What was it like to work closely with Miz and what are your impressions of him overall?
I'll be honest with you: I really like Miz. He came from being a reality TV star who I wouldn't have given a snowball's chances in Hades of ever being successful in our business. I just thought there's no way this kid's going to make it. He's too soft. This business will eat him alive. And Miz has proved me wrong. I respect Miz for that. He has fought and dug and clawed for everything that he has. If Miz has a superpower it's the fact that he can make anyone hate him. My analogy is that Mother Teresa would spend four hours in the car with him and want to bash his head through the window. He just has that gift to be annoying, and he uses it to his advantage. With Jericho and I, it was two veterans going back and forth and contributing different philosophies and ideas. I actually really learned a lot from Jericho. He's had a lot of great experiences from Japan and Mexico and Canada and all the different places he's wrestled. Jericho is really a fountain of information for wrestling knowledge. Partnering with The Miz – he talks a lot of trash on the microphone and in public, but Miz is a sponge when it comes to information. He sits there and absorbs it and calculates. I think that's why he's so successful. I was really impressed when I was tag-teaming with Miz in how he wanted to absorb everything – every story, every detail, every experience. I mean you could just see him processing it and breaking it down and saving it to apply for himself later. That's how you become successful in this business. You have to learn from the people around you and apply it and make it work for yourself, and I think Miz is excellent at that.
When you stepped from WWE a few years ago there was talk about you getting into professional boxing. How serious were you about becoming a boxer?
[Laughs] I think I was really serious until I got punched in the face. You know, the boxing thing was something I was interested in doing to change my lifestyle and get into shape and really improve my health. I met some friends and the idea was kicked around and talked about, and I trained quite hard for it. I went through the same training that any boxer does between training camps in getting ready for fights. And then, you know, I couldn't get fights, couldn't schedule fights. I mean, I'm not going to step in the ring and compete against Lennox Lews right off the bat. I need to get experience against guys with the same experience level I had, and those guys didn't want anything to do with me because I'd kill them. I was sparring with Oliver McCall, who is a former heavyweight champion. It takes a lot of courage to step over that rope and go in there basically knowing the other guy is going to be hitting you in the face as hard as he can and you have to hit him as hard as you can. It was a unique, eye-opening, great experience because I left all my stature, all my credibility as The Big Show, in the locker room and I came out there as a guy learning how to box and I had to earn my respect from the guys in the boxing gym, and I think I did. I just realized that boxing, to be competitive, I was too old to do it. It's something that I wish I could have started as a young man, like 10 or 11 years old. If I could have foretold the future and found out that I was going to be this size and have the hand speed that I have and the athletic ability and have been able to do boxing as a young man, I think I could have changed the world of heavyweight boxing forever. But being an old fart trying to do that, I've got no business being there, so my respect to them.
Photo courtesy of World Wrestling Entertainment