Look at this man! I'm telling you, ladies,
send your kids out of the room,
because I want you to take a look at Bam Bam Bigelow.
There's no one who doesn't know Bam Bam Bigelow.
And, if they don't know his name,
if they see the face and the head, they know it.
His entire head was a flame.
So, he started doing the flames on his suits and
his boots, and you'd look out into the audience
and the flame everywhere.
Bam! Oh! Wow!
He was just massive, but so athletic.
So quick.
Bammer, he did it almost like a ballet dancer.
Bigelow can move for a big man.
He knows what he's doing in there.
Look at this 400-pound man doing flips, cartwheels...
going through the ring, this is crazy.
In his time in the 80s, nobody was like him.
Like, this isn't right.
It wasn't just "Rookie of the Year",
it was "Phenomenon of the Year."
Bam Bam Bigelow!
Arriving on the scene like a force of nature,
Bam Bam Bigelow catapulted to the top of the
wrestling world and never looked back.
You need a little excitement?
When you've been on top in WWE and then you've
been on the tippety top top in ECW, you know,
they beat the ---- out of each other.
Wrestling rewarded Bam Bam's talents with money and fame,
but those rewards came with a heavy price.
All the wear and tear,
you're not gonna feel it right away.
But it's coming.
And that's when it changed.
And everything spiralled out of control.
You're selling your body, you're selling your health,
to have fame, fortune and everything that goes with it.
People had mouths to feed, so guys did
what they had to do to earn their living.
He was in pain, and there was a doctor involved that
was willing to take that away,
and things went downhill from there.
But Bam Bam's addictions eventually push him
beyond the point of redemption,
destroying everything he loved.
A trusted professional gave him the thing
that was his biggest demise.
This doctor, he could have handed
a loaded machine gun to our family.
It would have been no different.
No different.
♪
So, I'm just digging through the vast archives,
we have Dad's calendar,
and then if you go to November 15, 1987,
he got married, and then, you know,
not even taking a honeymoon.
Like, he had a day off,
and then he was in Des Moines, Iowa.
This is literally the first four days of his career
with the WWF in 1987.
He definitely wanted kids right away.
He was like, "I just want to stay home and raise the kids.
You could go to work, go to school,
do what you want to do."
And he was more excited about being a dad
than he was when he got Wrestlemania.
Hi, I'm Dana Breckenridge.
I was married to Bam Bam Bigelow.
And when Ricci came, I mean,
that was the best thing ever.
'Cause alls he ever really wanted was a daughter.
Oh yeah, he was a giant teddy bear.
What fans saw in the ring was not at all
what we saw at home.
It was love, it was playing around.
My name is Ricci Bigelow,
and my father is Bam Bam Bigelow.
We had this giant, giant bed that
we would all cuddle up in. Just jump around.
Yeah, it was a great time.
It was the last time I saw him.
We were just driving in the car,
and I was 2 or 3 years old,
but I remember seeing his head slowly drop to his chest
and then come back up.
And whenever I think back on how I went about
the situation I'm always so baffled,
because I was so young, but in some way I understood that
we were in some sort of danger.
And as a toddler, I went into panic mode.
"I gotta go to the bathroom! I gotta get out.
Daddy, Daddy, pull over, I can't!"
So we pulled over on the side of the road,
and he looked at me and gave me
this big toothless smile.
He's like, "Come on, do you have to go?"
Like it was just on the side of the road.
And I was like, "No, no." But kind of stalling,
and then we just got back on the road,
and it started happening again.
This time we were by a diner,
and we pulled into that diner,
and the next thing I know my car door was opened,
and a man just scooped me up and
put me in the back of this grey car.
And, from the backseat I watched them
take my dad in handcuffs, across.
That was it.
My mom came and picked me up,
and she was real gentle about it,
and she told me, "You're probably not going
to be seeing Daddy anymore. He needs help."
And that was the last time I saw him.
He wanted to be a wrestler,
but he wanted to be a father more.
And, um, everything was taken away.
So, was wrestling what took it away?
Or was Scott and all the other outside influences
what took it away? Like, how did this happen?
Oh here we go.
This is Dad sophomore year, in high school.
Oh my God.
Right? They were Class A North champions.
20 and 6.
That's probably the last time you'll see him with hair.
[Laughing]
Everything around Asbury Park is Bruce Springsteen.
The sound of Bruce Springsteen is everywhere and
in everything that we did when we grew up on The Shore.
Scott was a street kid from Neptune who hung out in
the bars of Asbury, you know,
driving the circuit in muscle cars.
For our age and our crowd he was definitely the man.
You know what, he was probably the kindest,
most genuine person of the group.
We were friends and it was just a progression,
and then it was a whirlwind, we were street kids.
Nobody thought about where they were going.
I didn't go to college, my friends didn't
go to college, he didn't go to college.
God, the Jersey Shore was like, the party place to be.
I was running a club called Club Xanadu
in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
The club is actually one block from The Stone Pony,
and in the middle was this place called Quack Quack.
It's DDP, Diamond Dallas Page,
and I know Bam Bam because I'm from the Jersey Shore.
-DDP! -Oh!
We've got a new world champion, guys.
I roll into the Quack Quack and
I see this mammoth kid.
At some point, you know, we're doing shots and
we just kind of clicked, you know,
but I think he was 17 at the time,
but no one cared,
'cause he looked like a full grown man.
He was, you know, 300 plus pounds,
and he could obviously be very menacing,
but he also had that fun side to him.
And they were calling him
"The Beast from the East" back then.
He was a football player and he was ranked in the state
for wrestling, and he was feared on the mat and
on the football field.
This is the time when heavyweight in
high school wrestling was unlimited.
So, you're talking about a 320 pound teenager
who can bench 500 pounds, walking onto a mat.
I'm Shane Bigelow.
My father is Bam Bam Bigelow.
I heard a story from a high school wrestling coach that
my father rolled his ankle real bad and he couldn't
wrestle, but his coach was just like, "Scotty,
I need you to just go up there and just look mean."
So he gets up, he steps up on the scale,
and he turns to the kid and he just gives him this
big flex, just like, "I'm coming for you!"
Lo and behold this kid is shitting his pants.
So, he tells his coach, "I'm not wrestling this guy,
he's going to rip my ----ing head off."
All my father had to do, he hopped out on one leg,
got his hand raised, and took the win.
Yeah, there was a group of the boys and
they were rough drinking, tattooed, like old sailors,
but not sailors, they were roofers.
[Laughing]
And they were very infamous around town.
Him and his brothers used to jump off of billboards
onto mattresses on the side of the road.
My grandmother would drive past, she would be like,
"Oh look at those kids." And then she'd realize that
it was her three boys jumping onto, like,
five mattresses piled high.
Scott was very quiet.
You know, he was the baby of the bunch.
They usually only called him in
when they needed the extra muscle.
I had heard he got into a fight and he bit
some kid's ear off, it's like, what? [Laughing]
But it's part of the legend that went with
"The Beast from the East."
Tough dude. He ran with rugged people.
He was all that and a bag of chips, man, he was a,
he was a bad apple when he wanted to be.
I am Taz.
Former ECW World Heavyweight Champion,
and former opponent of Bam Bam Bigelow.
Bam Bam Bigelow all over Taz.
I've heard all the stories about Bigelow,
and I believe them all.
There's a whole separate legend before The Legend
Bam Bam Bigelow ever became The Legend.
My name is Scott Colton Bigelow,
and Bam Bam Bigelow is my father.
I know that he was a bounty hunter for a short stint.
I don't know much about the backstory of it.
He was supposedly commissioned to go and
bring back a young girl
who was taken out of the country.
In the whole mayday craziness of the thing,
his bounty hunting partner ends up
getting shot in the neck and killed.
And that's when my dad spent
six months in a Mexican prison.
I heard he ended up in jail.
You know, in Mexico. [Laughing]
So you'd just hear little bits and pieces,
and with Scotty, they could be exaggerated.
The story is he befriended the judge because he used to
run through the walls that were made out of, like,
the terracotta clay.
He used to just break through the cells of the walls
so they couldn't keep him in.
So the judge one day apparently goes to him
and asks him, he goes,
"I need security from all these cartel, mob,
whatever guys.
So you stand in front of me and you stop these maniacs
from like, lunging at me, and trying to kill me,
and I'll knock your sentence down."
So the story is that a judge took pity on my father
because my father saved him from a
bunch of guys trying to jump over and stab him,
and he ended up letting him loose early.
He's basically a New Jersey legend.
There's a story that, uh, one night a house is on fire,
he's driving by, runs in and saves some kids.
He pulled over, ran in the house and saved the kids.
That sounds like a TV movie.
It doesn't sound like stuff that really happens, you know?
And, uh, there were a lot of stories like that,
just out there floating around.
I'm Shane Douglas and I had the pleasure of being
partners in The Triple Threat with Bam Bam Bigelow.
Who's the [Beep] world champion?
You know, as I had heard that he got arrested,
I guess in Mexico.
You know, that sounds implausible.
But then, like, over years you'd hear other people
repeating these stories and I'm just,
elevating that legend that was Bam Bam.
Here comes Bam Bam in the club,
and this is like '81-ish, and it's packed.
My club was nice.
And I see Bam roll in with like three of his
biker buddies, and I come rolling up behind him,
put my arm around his back, I'm like, "Yo, Bammer.
No trouble in here tonight, right bro?"
"Aw come on Page, I wouldn't do that to you."
And at some point we're at the bar and
I bought, you know, got the guys a shot,
and uh, wrestling comes up.
And, you know, I said, "You know, I tried that,
in '79." He goes, "You tried wrestling?"
And I said, "But I had three matches.
My third match I hurt my knee, and I kind of
got swept away by the booze, the broads, and the party."
But talking to him about it, you know, I'm like,
"Dude, you're a natural." He goes, "I've, I,
that would, that would be a, that would be a
pie in the sky dream for me."
So, Larry Sharpe was a former amateur wrestler...
Who opened up the Monster Factory.
My name is Dave Meltzer.
I'm the editor of The Wrestling Observer Newsletter
and I've been covering pro wrestling since 1971.
And, one day I guess Bam Bam walked in the door,
and Larry saw, like everyone did, money!
And he became Scott's "manager".
Set him up on a couch, threw him in the ring,
and trained him.
I saw footage of him coming out of the Monster Factory.
You could tell, like, his aptitude to learn
how to do this and get better at this, his athleticism,
it jumped out to me right away.
I mean, seeing a guy like that, you know,
a guy that big, you know, do a cartwheel, I was like,
"Wow." I mean, he's super impressive.
For Scott, professional wrestling,
it's like a double edged sword.
It gave him life and it took his life.
That's the ultimate double edge, isn't it?
In 1985, Scott Bigelow was on the brink of stardom,
having made a clean break from a troubled past.
When he went to the Monster Factory
with Larry Sharpe,
Larry really developed the name Bam Bam.
With Scott, Bam Bam. The strong babyface.
You're like, "Bam Bam, from the Flintstones."
So, he became Bam Bam Bigelow.
Probably the most handsome wrestler
on the face of the earth.
The massive head of Bam Bam,
and that big flame bowl on that head.
That tattoo.
Who gets ink on their head has gotta be crazy.
Nevertheless their whole head.
For those that never got a tattoo,
they hurt as much as they think, okay? [Laughing]
This guy got his skull tattooed.
Just imagine how much pain,
and how many hours that took to do.
This was the branding of Bam Bam Bigelow.
See people love to hate, and as long as
they wanna hate me, I know I'm doing my job.
And it kind of just sent that message to the fans and
to other wrestlers, that's a bad dude right there.
And Bammer, do you have anything to say about
all of this? -I'm hungry.
Despite being a rookie to the wrestling scene,
those with an eye for the business see
Bam Bam's incredible potential.
Especially soon-to-be industry pioneer,
Paul Heyman.
Paul was doing wrestling magazines at the time.
This was before he was actually running around
the business as a manager.
And in his magazines he was always promoting
Bam Bam Bigelow like this, this phenomenon.
And the guy had never even had a match.
Paul worked at Studio 54, he was doing publicity
at the time, and he got this, you know, gig.
Bam Bam Bigelow's first match.
And I looked at it, and I was just like, "Oh my God.
This guy is like 380 pounds,
and he's coming off the top rope."
At that point, you know, I'm going, like,
"This guy is gonna be like, it."
[Crowd cheering]
In wrestling, like, he's gonna be the biggest thing.
I was like 19 when we started dating,
and I was with his brother and a couple other friends,
and we went to his show, and he got up there and
he wrestled, and they were just in awe of what it all was.
I just was like, "Oh you know, he's at work."
I didn't really know too much about it
until the WWF came back.
At some point I'm running another really big club
in '86-ish, and I'm flicking the channels,
and all of a sudden I see him wrestling.
I'm like, "Oh my God! That's Bigelow!"
Take a good look, because we're bringing him
from one end of the world to the other.
Next thing I know, he's with Hulk Hogan,
he's in the WWF, and I'm like, "Oh my God."
From Asbury Park, New Jersey!
He made it.
-Bam Bam Bigelow. -[Cheering]
Not only is Bam Bam headed to the WWF,
but he's coming in with the full support of
company owner, Vince McMahon.
WWF brought him in, and, you know,
they tried to make him into the next big thing.
You know, they did the thing where all the managers were
bidding on him to make him extra special.
I'm here to introduce Bam Bam Bigelow.
Vince loved big guys, and now you've got the most agile
380 pound guy that anyone has ever seen.
I mean, they brought him in to be Hulk Hogan's
tag team partner, to be right there with Hogan,
and he was gonna main event there,
and he was gonna work with the top guys.
He signed the WWE contract and we got married
November 15th, 1987.
And he went on the road November 16th, 1987.
We were watching TV, and he was like...
[Laughing]
"Wanna get married?" [Laughing]
And I was like, "Okay!" [Laughing]
And that was basically it,
there was no fanfare.
I saw him ten times a year, I don't even know.
Maybe that's why our marriage lasted so long,
maybe that's why I don't have anything bad to say.
He was on the road and hit the ground running,
and it was on from there.
When he was home, you know, he did regular things.
So he remained very humble.
Scott was who he was around here.
But you know, it was cool to see him on TV.
He was in the first Nintendo game.
Like I said, he was just breaking into the business
and he worked, and he provided.
He knew to take advantage of that situation and to take
advantage of everything that was given to him.
What a monster!
Everybody that gets a pair of boots and tights
wants to be the world champion, right?
And they think they're ready for it yesterday.
For me it was 11 years before I saw a world title.
So, when I did get that belt I understood
the responsibility that went with it.
So I would think that Bam Bam being thrown
that quickly into main events with, you know,
Hulk Hogan or one of these massive names,
it would have been intimidating.
He never had to crawl his way up.
There's always going to be jealousy especially when
you've been in the business 15 years,
and he's been in the business for two, or one,
and he's on the top of the card.
He was young and these guys were big and it was
George "The Animal" Steele, and King Kong Bundy.
And it was just people that he always saw on TV and now
all of a sudden he's standing in the middle of the ring
in the Survivor Series, and the older guys were like,
"You know what, you need to step in line."
The eighth wonder of the world.
I remember, there was an André match,
of course André the Giant was the biggest man
you'll ever see.
André got him in the ring up against the ropes,
and wrapped the rope around his neck.
Scott was like, "He's gonna ----ing kill me.
Yeah, he's gonna kill me."
♪
Look out!
Even Bam Bam looks small next to this guy.
So, you know André, he was on top of him and
he was pounding on him. I mean, hard.
It was a bad night at the office
for Bam Bam Bigelow.
And André said something to him, like, "Young boy."
You know, "'You're a little green for us."
Like, "This is how it works."
Like, "You're gonna learn." And André really just
stuck it to him, but, you know, they were just
letting him know he had to pay his dues.
He was green, and you need to wait your turn,
'cause it's not right now.
[Laughing]
After only a year in the big leagues,
Bam Bam Bigelow's match with André the Giant
marks his exit from the WWF.
He had gotten such a big push,
but at a certain point they did sour on him.
Bam Bam Bigelow paid the price here.
And it may have been, ego-wise,
the other guys not liking him.
My father, just knowing when things get a little too thick
and it's not his time, he moved on.
Now on his own, Bam Bam travels the country
working for various US promotions before receiving
a lucrative offer to wrestle in Japan.
I don't even know what years these are,
but judging by the suit, probably early '90s.
This is one of his original Japanese suits.
There was more money for him to be had overseas.
When he went to Japan he was on for two weeks
and then home for two weeks.
So he had longer stretches of time home.
The contract.
And it was time for him to come back to the States.
I guess in his meeting with Vince, you know,
they worked a deal.
That he felt comfortable, and he was a little bit
more mature, and he was ready to come back.
So this is his, uh, coming out to the ring attire
when he was in his second run in the WWF.
He would have pyrotechnics underneath here,
and they would shoot, like, fireworks out.
Oh, wow!
I don't fill it out as much as, as much as he did.
♪
He said he used to look like a tulip in it.
In 1992 as the WWF struggles with declining popularity,
Vince McMahon brings Bam Bam back to the roster.
Once again proving to be a top level star,
Bam Bam gets thrust into the main event
of WrestleMania XI...
Wrestlemania 11!
When McMahon books him against of the NFL's
most celebrated players.
Lawrence Taylor.
Probably the most
media frenzied time of my father's career.
That was Scott's idol, like, LT and the Giants.
Like, "Now I'm gonna wrestle him." You know?
"I'm gonna wrestle with him."
That build up and that whole pomp and circumstance of
being the main event at Wrestlemania.
Lawrence Taylor, it's just me and you!
This was a match not for wrestling fans.
The media hype around this match
has been absolutely huge.
This was a match for the general public.
And the idea was by being in the match all the exposure
from the football press, and the mainstream press,
would then make Bam Bam's name bigger,
so then he could be the big star that
they wanted him to be.
That means I'm here, I did it.
I am the 1%.
Every little boy wants to be a WWE wrestler.
Almost every little boy. And he was main event.
It was a paycheque bigger than
a lot of people make in one year.
I see a lot of videos online.
People all, "Oh, it's the worst Wrestlemania."
You know what?
There's not another person that could have carried
Lawrence Taylor to do that show.
You know, Vince trusted my father enough to be the
person to pull that off.
Bam Bam soon learns that being the company's go-to
big man comes with certain sacrifices.
It definitely took a toll on his body.
I mean every time he sits in a chair and stands up,
he just squatted 400 pounds.
A lot of wear and tear on your knees.
Your back, your neck, your shoulders.
I mean the thing that made him so great was,
you know, an agile big guy.
The problem with the agile big guys is that by doing
that stuff, a smaller guy can take that stuff longer,
and the big guy it starts wearing down on you, a lot.
He definitely had some knee surgeries and
an elbow surgery or sholder surgery.
You know his body was starting to take
a little bit of a lickin'.
That's one thing I didn't do.
I didn't worry and I didn't stress out.
It was his job and he was an entertainer and
he was an athlete, and I was too young to think about
the lifelong lasting effects of wrestling and
what it would have on his body and his mind.
But I do know that he knew if he was out
and he was injured too long, somebody was going to
step up and replace him. So, that was a no-no.
I'm not letting the opportunity walk by me.
That heavyweight championship is gonna be mine!
[Sighing] Probably pain pills like everybody else.
But I do remember, you know, that was so commonplace
among wrestlers then.
It was such a part of the scene that
it wasn't like, a big deal.
And it was like, "Hey D, you got any Vikes?"
So you just gave em' to your boy.
You know, because he needed em' right there.
When you see this symbol you can be assured of
drug free entertainment you can be proud of.
Vince tested for marijuana and performance
enhancing drugs, but you've got a prescription,
you're good.
Through that 80s and then into the 90s,
there were two things that coincided.
Running, if this is the wrestling industry,
running right next to that is the pharmaceutical industry.
And the pharmaceutical industry is now coming up
with better, more accessible opiates, OxyContin,
which I did have a problem with.
I've seen it, uh, so much in my career,
so many of my peers during that time just left us
way too early because of addiction,
and especially pain pills.
He um, was diabetic and he had an endocrinologist.
Not a pain management doctor, and he would call,
and, "I need Percs, I need Vikes, I need Oxys,
I need something to keep me going."
If you were at the pool party and ol' Doc came by,
it was well, "I happen to have a refillable script of
OxyContins in return for autographs." Or, you know,
tickets to local shows here and there.
It's a pretty powerful thing to have over someone.
They might as well have just put heroine in a bottle and
called it OxyContin. I can guarantee you before that
prescription was done, he was probably addicted.
♪
In 1995 after a three-year run with the WWF,
Bam Bam Bigelow leaves the company to sign with the
notorious hardcore wrestling promotion ECW,
run by his old friend, Paul Heyman.
I mean, one reason he went to ECW was because
he liked how it was local.
Obviously, if he was in Asbury the whole family
would get together, we'd all go.
He knew he had a commodity.
You know, he didn't take his character off.
It was tattooed on his head, so, wherever he went,
Bam Bam Bigelow was going.
There is only one Bam Bam Bigelow!
I think it was a little too hardcore for me,
being so young.
♪
Our fans were riding with us.
That was the whole gimmick.
We were renegades, well dammit,
we, the fans, we're renegades too.
From fit to finish those shows were chaos.
I remember this crowd just like a mosh pit.
And this dude who is drunk as a skunk,
comes barrelling and just absolutely face punches me,
and chucks me right into the ground.
You know, like 10, 11 years old.
Like I've never been hit by a grown man,
and it's that type of, like, where you're like- [Gasping]
You can't catch your breath.
So I remember going backstage,
and I don't even think I told my father anything,
he just like saw it. And he's like,
"What happened?" And I'm like,
"I don't know, this guy punched me,"
like went through the crowd, he's like, "Find him."
The gentleman who did that was escorted to the back
for a conversation.
I witnessed this quasi conversation,
I'll never forget it.
And all you hear is, "So, you wanna hit kids?"
And you know that like,
this dude is getting the life smacked out of him.
I don't know how else to put it, it was very bad.
[Laughing] I'm sure everybody's OK now.
But the fans in turn are fuelled by ECW's over the top
ultra-violent brand of extreme wrestling.
In ECW, we were a bunch of wrestlers
that most of the bigger promotions,
they didn't want us, kinda.
And we were like the land of misfit toys.
And it incorporated a lot of new stuff into pro wrestling
in a revolutionary way.
I mean, you had to be tough to be in our company,
and Bigelow was a very tough guy, a legitimate guy.
And he really started to come into his own,
the months that we were doing.
The stuff that these guys were doing,
jumping off the rafters, through tables,
getting thrown into the stands-
It's just as hardcore as hardcore can get.
Belly suplex!
We weren't just trying to hurt each other,
we were professionals.
What happens in that ring is built on trust.
So, the infamous Taz and Bigelow
go through the ring in Asbury Park.
So I get this phone call from Paul Heyman, and um, he says,
"You and Bigelow, he's gonna beat you for the belt,
and he's gonna put you through the ring to do it."
He goes, "What do you think?"
And the first thing I thought is, "I'm gonna die."
So, the way a ring is constructed,
it's a steel frame, and then there's these
thick wood boards,
and then there's kind of like a, uh, cushion.
It's not as big as a mat.
And then a canvas.
So these wood boards were cut first.
So then the boards were just moved out of the way,
then opened a trap door.
And Bam Bam was concerned.
"What about Taz's head?"
Like, "His heads gonna hit the frame of this thing.
How are we going to clear this hole?"
I almost feel dirty explaining this on here.
[Off-screen] [Laughing]
I'm so old school, it's ----ing like, unbelievable.
So, basically, we fought, fought, fought.
We were outside the ring for quite some time fighting
until we get the signal that this door is open.
It's got both champion and challenger back in the ring.
So, if you watch closely...
He's got it! He's got it locked up!
When I have the choke on him- and I'm really pulling it
back this curtain all the way here, right?
So, Bam Bam, he's tapping first.
Then he puts his hand on the top rope.
Under his hand is a little piece of white tape.
That white tape was the measurement to clear my head.
[Cheering]
We hit that crash mat hard as hell.
[Chanting] ECW! ECW!
The ring engulfs us. And we heard the people.
[Cheering]
My eyes lit up, I was so happy.
And the first thing he says to me,
"Are you okay?" That's Bam Bam Bigelow.
And he goes, "We ----in' did it!"
And we were laughing,
because the place was rumbling.
He waited for the people to come down a teeny bit,
and then once they saw him come out first,
we knew the pop would be loud but I don't know
if we knew it was gonna be that loud.
I mean, i was just...
I'll never forget it as long as I live.
And we've got a new...
I get goosebumps.
...World Television Champion!
There are so many things that could have gone wrong.
You could break your back, you could break your neck.
Uh, but Scotty never ever said no to anything.
It's a small miracle that Bigelow is moving.
You would see him come out, he'd have, you know,
giant gashes on his head, and he would just put some
superglue on it, close it up,
and then we would go have a cheesesteak.
I can't tell you how many times he's been
sewed up in our living room.
Doctor just would come over and just sew him up
in the middle of the night while he was half asleep.
So the injuries were the beginning of the end.
He had stenosis in the entirety of his spine.
He had crushed discs.
He had sections fused of his back at that time.
You could run your finger down his spine and
you could feel, almost like brail.
Pills just allowed him to move.
If you didn't go out and you didn't put on a show,
you weren't getting paid.
So, I understand the aspect of having to take something
to basically push you through that.
I did see Bigelow struggling a little bit physically,
but he, he hid it well.
He wouldn't tell you, if you had to go over a match,
"Hey dude, I'm hurting here, my shoulder hurts,
my neck hurts, my back hurts."
He was just, "Let's go." You know, "Let's do it."
You know, whatever it was.
The pain pills Bam Bam Bigelow consumes allow him
to continue performing at the highest level,
but they also take a toll on his life away from the ring.
He was never, never, never aggressive.
And he was always very respectful.
And he became angry.
He would, at times, be very coherent,
and at times be very incoherent.
And he would be like, "You are just crazy and
you're making things up.
I'm under a doctor's care, and this is, you know,
what I have to do to be in the business."
It was a doctor.
An MD, who get paid a lot of money,
to treat him for one disease,
and gave him another, a whole other one.
The pill bottles from that doctor,
I've never seen pill bottles of that size
in my life before.
100 pills? 300 pills?
His doctor was a fan,
and he would have done anything that Scott wanted,
regardless of his license, and he did.
Scott was in denial and so was the doctor,
because I would call him and say,
"Stop writing these prescriptions.
You're destroying our lives. You're ruining our family."
And that doctor's response,
he would call my father and say that,
"The warden's calling me telling me not to come over."
Undermining my mother to my father
in an already weakened state.
Nobody's paying attention to these doctors.
You're a drug dealer.
'Cause he was not a pain doctor.
It's a tragedy.
Scott sold his soul for OxyContins.
And he would have stepped over us in the street
to get them.
♪
Bam Bam Bigelow's addiction continues to get worse,
fuelled by an endless supply of OxyContin from his doctor.
OxyContin is one of America's new wonder drugs.
Since the drug came on the market the number of annual
prescriptions has risen to nearly 6 million.
Contributing to the problem are pill mills,
where doctors write prescriptions for
non-medical reasons.
He wasn't going to buy drugs off the street.
He was home taking OxyContins.
And then I got pregnant with Ricci, and then the promises,
you know, "This is gonna be different.
We're gonna get through this."
I think he tried to pull himself together because
he said he always wanted a daughter his whole life.
It was like beyond anything to have this daughter,
and when she was little he used to put her to bed
every single night, and he would get a pillow and
he would lay on the floor next to her,
and he would sing her songs, and hold her hands.
And he was in her room on her floor every night.
Wednesdays.
Every Wednesday my dad would pick me up from preschool.
Big red truck.
Eat all the Doritos you could imagine.
Paint pictures.
Just, normal father- daughter relationship.
When he was around he was focused on being with us and
spending time with us.
How you doing, boy? [Laughing]
His body was a little hindered,
and he was starting to feel the pain.
But, you know that didn't stop us from going to
every opening day for fishing.
Every opening day for hunting.
He got to be a dad.
So with Dad being on the road 300 plus days a year.
Those are the fondest memories.
There's no pension in professional wrestling.
So, he needed to make as
much money as he could with the
body that he had, 'cause he knew it was deteriorating.
He even says that he's the highest paid loser
in the world, because he'll take a loss
as long as that loss pays.
I'm the guy who helped bring Bam Bam in to WCW.
When he heard that I was wrestling,
somehow he got my number, he's like,
"Dude, you're doing it."
Like, we grew up maybe 7 miles from each other.
These two Jersey Shore boys.
But now we're tag team champions.
I never felt like he was under the influence
in the ring but, you know, eventually, you know,
people start to go back to their old habits and
that's why so many guys died.
Over consumption of pills.
Because when you're taking five at a time,
'cause three stopped working.
[Sighing] I'm not, you can't remember
if you took them or not, so you take five more.
You know, and before you know it-
[Gagging]- you're that guy.
He went on the road and
he would not show up to shows or tapings.
He was in Arizona, and, um, friends of ours were there,
and he didn't make it to the show and they called home.
And I was like, "What do you mean?
He's there." It got to the point where
he was a liability, and that's what they said.
And they paid him the rest of his contract to stay home
because he could not function.
I saw a man broken.
He's away from his family, and he's not in the best
physical shape because he's in constant pain.
You know, having to take a pill just to get up.
And not just a pill, multiple pills.
But the trade off of that is
it completely dulls your senses,
it completely just destroys your sense of person.
15, 20 OxyContins, easily.
Yeah.
It was dangerous.
And a situation happened with the youngest
where it became very dangerous.
I had wrote a paper about it
when I was in 8th grade.
And I went back and read it last night understanding that
what was happening was, I'm writing about
my father nodding out, driving.
And when I wrote that in 8th grade
I had no idea that's what was going on.
And I remember the officers were asking me
all these questions, like, I mean,
for a three-year-old, they're asking me
my address, my phone number,
my mom's phone number, like all this information,
and I'm just like, "I don't know. Where's my dad?"
So when I went back last night and read it,
really knowing what was going on,
what was in his system, it just hits ten times harder.
As Bam Bam Bigelow's addiction sends him
crashing to rock bottom, he's charged with
endangering the welfare of his daughter.
He was given an ultimatum. I'm like,
"You've either gotta go get help,
or you have to go."
He wouldn't get help, and he went.
He didn't see that he had a problem the way that he did,
and the way that addicts do.
And you know, Dad's not gonna be home anymore,
they're getting a divorce.
That's when he picked up and basically went to Florida.
He was married to a drug.
So to watch a man who would choose that
over his children, when I knew that that was
the most important thing,
was just the worst thing ever.
And I got to talk to him on the phone, but it would be,
like, spans of where it would be really quiet,
because I could hear him crying.
He was struggling to form the words, "Hi."
I went down to Tampa, spring break my senior year.
I wanted to go down there to see my friends but I really
just wanted to go down there to find my dad.
And um- [Sighing]-
His girlfriend answered the phone,
said he wasn't available at that point in time,
and then I got a phone call when I landed back in
New Jersey from my father, apologizing.
And uh, you know I kind of aired him out a little bit,
told him how I felt, um...
and then he died.
Three weeks later.
I was in school, teaching,
and a phone call got patched to my classroom,
and it was his brother, Todd.
And Todd said, "He's gone."
I was like, "What do you mean?"
He's like, "He's gone."
And he was crying hysterically,
and I just hung up the phone and ran out of the building,
and Shane was in college.
Yeah, I got that call. I'll never forget it.
I'm walking back through the quad,
there's kids going to class, and I got a phone call
from my father's childhood friend.
"Your father died last night."
And it just like... everybody around you is
moving fast and you're just still.
I just remember being numb.
[Exhaling sharply] It rocked me.
What I heard, um, at that time, he was, uh,
you know, going through a tough time.
I thought of his family instantly,
because I know how much he loved his family and
his wife, you know, I just felt for them.
He died of an overdose.
Accidental overdose, but...
you know the word accidental and overdose
should just not be in the same sentence.
How do you accidentally, "Oops!" Took one too many?
He took one too many for a long time.
♪
On January 19th, 2007,
at just 45 years of age,
Bam Bam Bigelow dies by what authorities call an
accidental overdose, from a cocktail of
illicit and prescription drugs.
I didn't grieve.
There was none for me, because I was scrambling.
I had kids, they couldn't see me break down.
They couldn't see me weak.
And that's all I became, was a provider.
Like, I didn't have time to coddle and nurture.
That's the hardest part on me now.
Towards the end it was very difficult with my mother.
Just because, that was my dad, that was my hero.
My mom had to make a really tough decision.
You know, for a while I never understood
why we couldn't just go see dad.
And when you don't understand
you just think it's selfish.
But then when you do,
you become appreciative that you weren't
exposed to something that would've been
just so heart breaking.
As a father I think it just digs into you that
when you think, if there was no compunction for
Bammer to reach out for some kind of help,
that he must have thought that he had it under control.
He must have figured this is not really a problem.
Because of how much he talked about his kids.
It's been just- [Sighing]-
honouring the legacy of Bam Bam.
Now collision course!
I never really got to stop and acknowledge my own pain.
You always think about if you had one last chance
what you would say. I think there's more ask.
Just why?
His kids lost their dad at a young age.
It's sad, you know, because Bigelow like so many of us
wrestlers during that time, was on the road a lot.
You know, you're not around.
You're making a living for your family.
You mother----er.
But, through years of therapy,
I know you had no control.
It's not your fault. I don't blame you.
♪
You know nobody wakes up in the morning and says,
"I'm gonna be a drug addict today."
You wake up every morning and you're like,
"Today is gonna be a change."
But I would call him a mother----er first.
Just 'cause he would expect that.
I can't fault him for what happened.
You had to keep going.
That's how you put the bread on the table.
I signed all the rights over to the kids,
so they got all the royalty cheques.
So he, in his death, still supported them.
Nobody. There's nobody.
When I think of pro wrestling I think of power,
I think of size, I think of my father.
World heavyweight champion,
The Beast from the East, Bam Bam Bigelow!
He was a great person, and how he lived and
all the wonderful things that he did for people,
and the great father that he was,
should be what is remembered.
Not how he died, because that's a terrible story,
but he left such a legacy.
Bam Bam! Look at that maneuver!
[Laughing]
He was that 1%.