AEW's Paul Wight Confirms High-Risk Maneuver Was Once In His Arsenal
For years, rumors have persisted that Paul Wight had the ability to perform a moonsault during his days training at the WCW Power Plant. As it turns out, the rumors were true, with the AEW star confirming as much in a recent interview with "ET Canada". Though, he doesn't believe the video of him performing the move has survived.
"It's probably gone by now," Wight said. "That was done with VHS tape so long ago that hung around the training room. It was one of those things that was passed around. Who knows; it's probably in a landfill somewhere in Georgia by now."
The "AEW Dark: Elevation" commentator then explained just how a man of his stature was able to pull off the moonsault.
"I had athleticism that was crazy for my size," Wight said. "When I came in, I could do kickups, I could do dropkicks, dropkicks off the top. I could do a moonsault. But I was, believe it or not, the way the industry was then because it was still transitioning, nobody knew what to do with me. Because I wasn't like anything they had ever seen before.
"Some guys wanted me to wrestle like Andre. Well, Andre worked in a different style in a different era. To me, when I worked like Andre, it felt like it was a snoozefest. So it was hard to find how I show them I'm an athlete. There were so many things as the business changed that I had to learn, and develop, and change over the years. But yeah, all of that was legit stuff."
Wight, who noted he would soon be wrestling in AEW as Captain Insano, his character from the film "The Waterboy", also confirmed that his fabled moonsault never made it out of the WCW Power Plant and onto the big stage.
"No, strictly in training," Wight said. "There are rumors of me doing it in Japan. It wasn't in a match, it was screwing around in the afternoon. And I was told immediately not to do it ever again if I wanted to continue working where I was working. Cause I was thinking, 'Well, Japan's a great place to break it out. Here we go.' And it was shut down immediately by those that had the creative control."