Throwback Thursday – Bam Bam Bigelow

It’s that day of the week again.  Time for another Throwback Thursday.  This week, I was given a suggestion by my little sister to talk about “The Beast From The East” Bam Bam Bigelow.  It sort of caught me off guard when she suggested him because she basically said, “You should talk about that guy with the tattoos on his head.”  I knew who she was talking about, but considering she hasn’t watched wrestling since the 1990s, I was shocked that he was the first person she remembered.

If there were conversations about who is the best all-time big man in the wrestling business, I know that Bam Bam would be in the conversation.  This guy could really wrestle, and he was pretty damn agile for his size.  He had some entertaining feuds over the years, but the one that sticks out in my head the most was with Doink The Clown.  Yeah, I enjoyed one of the most ridiculous feuds he had, but it was entertaining.  I believe it was at WrestleMania X when he and his “main squeeze” Luna Vachon tag teamed against Doink and his buddy Dink The Clown in a mixed tag team match.  Dink was a mini me of Doink, so he was supposed to only wrestle against Luna.  Bam Bam had it out for Dink and wanted to get his hands on the little guy so badly.  I actually did a Youtube search, and I found the match.

Another WrestleMania moment that Bam Bam was a part of was at WrestleMania XI when he squared off against former NFL all-pro, Lawrence Taylor.  The match was shockingly the main event of the night.  Taylor ended up beating Bam Bam even though Bigelow dominated most of the match.  Match was sort of sad since Taylor couldn’t even run the ropes properly, and it seemed like most of Taylor’s offense consisted of forearms to Bam Bam’s face.  I’ll give Taylor some credit, he did complete a few suplexes, but they were pretty awful.

Now I didn’t see this one with my own eyes when it happened, but this moment will always be in the memory banks of die-hard wrestling fans from all over the world.  In the original ECW (mid 1990s), there was a match between Bam Bam and Taz.  The match got extreme as per the norm for ECW.  The battle wound up going to the entrance ramp, which at the time for ECW was a platform that was evenly matched up, height-wise, with the ring.  Well, I could tell you, what happened, but you’ve got to see it with your own eyes.  It was something that, at the time, I had never seen before.

Bam Bam eventually made his way over to WCW in the late 1990s, and he was a Tag Team Champion over there with Chris Kanyon & Diamond Dallas Page eventually using “Freebird Rules” to alternate who defended the title on a given night.  I personally didn’t watch too much WCW, so memories of him for me during this time aren’t being recalled very easily right now.

Another random memory I have of Bam Bam comes from the movie Major Payne. He was a biker guy that was hired by the ROTC kids to beat up their overbearing drill instructor played by Damon Wayans.  He got his ass whooped up on screen.  That really has no bearing on his wrestling career, but I figured I’d bring it up because I thought that movie was hilarious.

In January 2007, Bam Bam Bigelow passed away at his home in Florida at the age of 45.  They found cocaine and anti-anxiety drugs in his system, and it didn’t help that he was suffering from a heart condition at the time as well.

If you have a suggestion for next week’s Throwback Thursday superstar, just drop me a comment or send a message on Twitter or Facebook.