Since the initial pro wrestling boom period in the mid 1980’s, WWE has frequently involved mainstream celebrities as either guest hosts, or participants in their storylines. Sometimes they’ve had success — like with Mr. T at the inaugural WrestleMania in 1985, and Mike Tyson at WrestleMania 14 in 1998 — and sometimes the celebrities have added absolutely nothing, and you can look at the majority of the RAW guest hosts for a good example of that.
WWE’s thought process on celebrities — no matter how many times they fail — is that they will add interest to their product, therefore they’ll make more money, and one of the celebrities that helped them do just that was undefeated professional boxer and pay-per-view mega-star Floyd “Money” Mayweather when he took on The Big Show at WrestleMania 24 .
One of the most famous segments in the history of WWE was when Big Show got down on his knees, and let Mayweather punch him in the face , which led to Big Show getting his nose broken. Since that happened, the belief was that Mayweather broke Big Show’s nose by accident, but — according to “The World’s Largest Athlete” — it wasn’t an accident at all.
Big Show was Chris Jericho’s latest guest on his popular, twice-a-week podcast Talk is Jericho , and talked about his angle with Mayweather, and the famous segment, where he revealed that he told Mayweather before they went to the ring to break his nose, because that was the only way their angle was going to get any heat.
“He broke my nose that first night when we started the angle, and I had done some boxing the whole year before I came back. So, believe it or not, I was kind of used to getting punched in the face. So, when I was talking to him I said, ‘look, I’m so much bigger than you. You’re going to need to break my nose.’ And Floyd is such a great boxer, I trusted him to break my nose, because there’s a way to do it, and if you’re a fighter you know how to do it.”
“I said, ‘if you don’t break my nose, we’re dead in the water and we need to get people emotionally invested in this.’ We want to get people talking like, ‘who is dumb enough to let a boxing champion break his nose?’ I went down on my knees, stuck my face out, and closed my eyes to get my nose broken.”
Big Show also noted that the original idea for Floyd Mayweather was for Mayweather to team with Show to take on Rey Mysterio and Batista in a tag-team match at WrestleMania 24 , but the plans changed after Rey Mysterio got hurt.
Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer also has noted in the past that Big Show was supposed to be the heel in the match with Mayweather, but — of course — plans changed after the fans turned on Mayweather.
[Image via Ethan Miller / Getty Images ]
