Paul Wight Recalls Infamous Monster Truck Match Against WWE HOFer
In an interview with ET Canada, AEW star Paul Wight discussed one of the most infamous moments of his career, his WCW World Heavyweight Championship match against Hulk Hogan at "Halloween Havoc 1995" that saw him fall off of Cobo Hall before the match during his monster truck battle with Hulk Hogan. Monster trucks were no stranger to wrestling in the '90s, with WCW and WWE using them in angles.
"I definitely wouldn't even consider doing that now at my age, at my wisdom. Like, 'no, why are we doing that?'" Wight said of the situation. "But at 22, 23 years old, I'm like, 'yeah! Whatever you want to do. Do you want to push me off the building? Awesome!' Because you're just so excited. That night, I remember it was in Detroit and it was so cold. It was "Halloween Havoc" and it was October of 1995. It was so cold, we were on the roof. We did the monster truck battle because that was a thing we did. I ran over Hogan's motorcycle with my monster truck, and then he went and got a monster truck.
"And then we had a monster truck duel that I lost. Then we got out, fought around, and then the thing was to fall off the building. It was about four stories into a big airbag. I'm not a stuntman, I've never done anything like that. But we had our stunt coordinator going, 'oh, it's a big airbag, it's fine, don't worry about it.' So you're young, you think you're bulletproof, you're just, 'okay, sure.' You go off it. Then we went and had the match."
Wight, who is the current color commentator on AEW Dark: Elevation, also had an explanation for why he showed up for his main event match with Hogan unharmed from the fall.
"I remember asking Kevin Sullivan, who was kind of in charge of the creative? Back then, we called him a booker. I said, 'hey Kevin, should I be bruised up or anything from falling?' Cause I don't know, I'm so green. He goes, 'brother, you're The Giant! You're fine!' And he walked off. So that was the old "Halloween Havoc"."
As revealed by Wight, however, the best part of his fall off of Cobo Hall ultimately wasn't caught on tape.
"It doesn't do it justice," Wight said of WCW's camera shot of his fall. "My reaction, I've said this before as a joke, but just being young and funny, when I went over and Hulk's looking over the top at me, I was flipping the bird at him on the way down. I threw up a little bird on the way down. It's a wonder he didn't bust out laughing when I did it because I kind of saw his face. That was a fun day of wrestling when we were doing that crazy, off-the-mark kind of stuff."