Former professional wrestler, New Jersey-born native Bam Bam Bigelow was found dead in his home in Florida on Friday.
I’ll always remember Bam Bam as the man who made Lawrence Taylor, back in his coke days, look good at Wrestlemania 11, plus his awesome ECW matches against Taz. Additionally, he helped Terry ‘Bam Bam’ Gordy of the Freebirds, wrestling him and doing his best to make Gordy look good (Gordy’s brain appeared to be fried by this time) in a ‘Battle of the Bam Bams’. Bam Bam also was praised for saving several children during a fire, where he suffered bad burns, during his WCW run.
Bigelow was amazingly agile for his size. Guy was around 400 pounds, and he did moves not many big men would or could do.
He struggled with many of the typical problems associated with life on the road. Had a few scrapes with the law along the way, and may have been facing charges for a motorcycle accident from a few months back.
Started in Memphis around 1986, worked all over the U.S. and in Japan. Teamed with Big Van Vader for New Japan, won the tag titles over there.
He was always one of my favorites. Most big men like Bam Bam get by on their size alone and don’t have a lot of actual talent in the ring. Bam Bam was a big man who could actually carry lesser wrestlers, and even non-wrestlers to good matches.
I always thought that he was one of the more underutilized wrestlers of his day. As I understand it, his match with LT at Wrestlemania was supposed to lead to a huge push afterwards, possibly even a run as World Champ. Plans changed, a they do in the pro wrestling business and it never happened. We’ll never know what might have been.
Yet another pro wrestler passes away much too young. RIP Bam Bam.
Unfortunately, I worked very late on Monday (plus I would have been watching 24) and didn’t see the start of Monday Night Raw. Did anyone see if they made mention of Bam Bam at the top of the show?
Bam Bam and Taz going through the ring in ECW was an amazing shot. That was the night that Bam Bam won the ECW World Title (or was it the TV title? - I’m confused in my old age). I watched Wrestlemania 11 on PPV, and he did carry Lawrence Taylor. I remember reading an interview he had many years later, where he gave credit to the original LT for taking the time to learn what to do, versus some of the other non-wrestlers he had to face. That said, it still takes skill to headline a Wrestlemania (it was the closing match) AND carry a non-wrestler to a good match. Need to check Netflix and hope they have a DVD with this match.
For such a huge, scary looking dude, it was surprising to be reminded that his first WWF run started as a babyface.
