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All these years on, it’s still mind-blowing to think that World Championship Wrestling decided to introduce Paul ‘The Giant’ Wight as the son of the legendary Andre The Giant in 1995. The man was even given similar ring gear to his storyline father, but the idea of the pair being related was phased out after a while. This can only be considered a good thing, because the shadow of Andre was a huge one to fill for a relative rookie.

Recently, Wight – now known as The Big Show – sat down with Steve Austin for the WWE Network. The interview turned out to be quite a revealing peek into the man’s personal life before he broke into the pro wrestling business, and even included a fascinating story about his proposed deal with WCW. That story is featured in this article, one which aims to display 10 different wrestling facts...

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WWE has been built on a foundation of dastardly heels and all-conquering babyfaces. Granted, these days it seems that about 80% of the roster flits far too often from one role to another, or simply just gets a nonplussed reaction no matter what they do (hey, Sheamus!).

Whilst their roles and characters may have changed over the years, there are some special performers who are equally as fantastic at being a no-good bad guy or a baby-kissing good guy. It’s a tough act to be able to pull off both personas to a high standard, but it’s certainly not impossible.

Now many fans have been crying out for a Roman Reigns heel turn for the past few months, with the rationale there being that a solid run as a great, cocky, natural heel would do wonders for Roman and cause him to transform into the man when he...

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There has been some talk making the rounds of late pertaining to Jesse Ventura returning to politics. However, the question always comes up as to who the longtime independent would align himself with in today’s very divided two party system in the United States.

Ventura, the former Governor of Minnesota, had previously mentioned that Donald Trump was a candidate that interested him. Ventura has known the current candidate for the Republican nomination for over 25 years, going back to the days of Trump hosting WrestleMania IV and V at his hotel and casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

However, in a new interview with the New York Daily News, it sounds like a different figure has garnered Ventura’s interest: Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders.

In regards to the current Vermont senator (Sanders), Ventura told the NY Daily news, “Would I run with Bernie? Sure, I’d give him consideration.

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In late-2014, World Wrestling Entertainment took the decision to shut down all printing in their physical magazine department. The publication had become an unnecessary nuisance to the company, or at least that’s how it came across for the last few years of the magazine’s run. Examining the covers of each issue over the past few years gives that away.

Once an important part of the then-wwf’s product, WWF/WWE Magazine had outlived any usefulness long ago. By the time the mag was shut down, it had become a tough sell. Gone were the days of interesting interviews and visually stunning photo spreads. In their place, WWE Magazine was an awkward mix of workout tips, short interview clips and out-of-date coverage of Pay-Per-Views.

Ignoring the past few years of printing, WWF/WWE Magazine used to be something wrestling fans looked forward to picking up. Perhaps the internet...

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WWE’s annual summertime extravaganza SummerSlam has been home to some of the greatest rivalries in WWE history. The Mega Powers and the Mega Bucks clashed at the inaugural event in 1988, bringing an end to a rivalry that started months earlier at WrestleMania IV. Hogan returned from a career-threatening rib injury caused by newcomer Earthquake two years later to clash with the behemoth at the 1990 event. The love triangle between Triple H, Kurt Angle and Stephanie McMahon took center stage during the WWE Championship defense by The Rock in 2000 and Undertaker and Edge’s year-long battle for SmackDown supremacy resulted in a vicious and brutal Hell in a Cell main event in 2008.

For every great feud that unfolded on the grand stage presented by SummerSlam, there was a feud that failed to live up to expectations. Some failed so miserably that the only way to properly describe them...

Since acquiring both Ecw and WCW, Vince McMahon’s WWE has become the veritable titan in the sports entertainment industry. Their “Then. Now. Forever.” ethos has been exemplified on their recent video archive, the WWE Network, their Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, and every episode of Raw where Michael Cole refers to a flying elbow as “shades of Randy Savage.”

Most recently, this mentality has been at the center of the last two installments of 2K’s WWE video game series, with the Attitude Era being represented in 2012, and 30 Years of Wrestlemania being showcased last year. With Sting finally signing his Legends contract, it’s the perfect opportunity for the upcoming 2K15 installment to honor World Championship Wrestling and show off some of their more entertaining storylines.

Disclaimer: No title on a pole matches included.

10. Clash Of Champions (Flair vs. Sting) Copyright: WWE – The Best Of WCW Clash Of The Champions...

This Sunday is the biggest day on the calendar year for those of us who still prefer this Steve Austin over the one from The Six Million Dollar Man and who still get the urge to patriotically tear off our shirts whenever this terrible Rick Derringer song kicks in. It’s WrestleMania XXX (that’s XXX as in “30,” not in porn terms), and it’s airing live from New Orleans on Sunday night.

I’m particularly excited for this iteration of the show thanks to the development that has completely re-aligned the way I watch and think about the WWE’s theatrical grappling arts.

As I write this we are only a couple of weeks away from the thirtieth WrestleMania event, which is being held on April 7th 2014 in New Orleans, Louisiana. The excitement for wrestling fans, and more-so, WWE fans, often reaches it’s height in the weeks leading to the so-called “showcase of the immortals” and what was once, prior to Vince McMahon feeling like it made the event sound “old”, “the grand-daddy of ‘em all”.

I started watching wrestling in 1992 and the first show I ever watched was WrestleMania 8, held at the Hoosier Dome in Indianapolis, Indiana. The show featured two spectacular matches, being Bret Hart vs. Roddy Piper and Randy Savage vs. Ric Flair. Randy Savage would remain my favourite wrestler of all time from this event on. Looking back on this event in 2014, and these matches still hold up today. Great selling, wonderful story telling, and top notch wrestling from these four men.

While the WWF was prospering in the north, Jim Crockett Promotions was growing in the south. Jcp boasted a talented roster – better than McMahon’s in my opinion – and it became the Nwa’s premier member, making it the WWF’s main rival. It was decided in 1983 that the company would create a new ‘super show’ at the Greensboro Coliseum – Jcp already had a tradition of holding shows there on Thanksgiving. Starrcade was a huge financial and critical success.

Things went wrong in 1987. The WWF chose to run their own Thanksgiving show, Survivor Series, at the same time. Starrcade 1987 also marked the first time Jcp entered the world of PPV, something the WWF had been doing since WrestleMania III. Vince McMahon threatened the cable companies, saying that if they showed Starrcade they would not be able to show Survivor Series and WrestleMania IV. The fact that Hulk Hogan was a mainstream celebrity,...

Big-time professional wrestling has long been a lucrative business, but for the men of Lincolnton, North Carolina’s Millenium Wrestling Federation, the social cohesion and outlet for their imagination the sport provides is their primary compensation. As chronicled in director Robert Greene’s fantastic new documentary Fake It So Real, wrestling has never seemed as intense and physically costly. Yet Greene is not interested in mining the sport for tales of snake-bitten men reaching for a glory that will never come; this isn’t a doc version of The Wrestler. Woebegone men are few and far between in this world, despite the fact that Lincolnton seemingly doesn’t provide much in terms of career prospects. A sense of community and mutually-appreciated craft pervades the scene.

Fake It So Real is Greene’s second festival hit in as many years. His debut film Kati with an I was nominated for the...

So sue me, I'm a wrestling fan. I first got into what WWE head cheese Vince McMahon prefers to call 'sports entertainment' these days way back in the early 1990s, in the era of (then) established stars like Hulk Hogan, Brutus 'The Barber' Beefcake, 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper, 'Million Dollar Man' Ted Dibiase, Mr Perfect, Big Bossman and a colourful, gravel throated character known as the 'Macho Man, aka Mr Randy Savage.

Born Randall Mario Poffo in 1952, Savage was a supernova among stars in the WWF roster, a character so much larger than life that even the red and yellow machismo machine that was Hulk Hogan struggled to match him in the charisma stakes.

Coming from athletic stock (his father Angelo Poffo, a well known wrestler in his own right in the 1950s and 60s who at one point held the World Sit Up record), Savage initially aspired to be a baseball player,...