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Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow: 1962-2007

Posted: Jan 21st 2007 By: CMBurnham

His name was Scott Charles Bigelow. But to the world he will always be "Bam Bam."

In the end, Bigelow may not have wanted it that way. Retired from professional wrestling and facing a tightening squeeze of money and legal problems, he confessed to a Florida reporter in November 2005 that he wished his alter ego would disappear.

"I don't know if it's hiding or disappointment or what," the Neptune native told the St. Petersburg Times. "But being Bam Bam Bigelow is a pain. ... You did this the first half of your life and now this is the second half, and now you're bruised and battered. So what the hell can you do?"

A tough question, given his appearance -- his 6-foot-3 frame, his 325-pound girth and especially the signature tattoo that covered his entire scalp. He was also in the news at the time: A month earlier, he was allegedly drunk when his motorcycle crashed, severely injuring his girlfriend.

It was a question Bigelow apparently never resolved. The 45-year-old was found dead Friday morning by his girlfriend at her home in Hudson, Fla. He was awaiting trial for his role in the DWI crash, for which he was facing potential prison time.

Authorities said there were no obvious signs of foul play, but a cause of death had not been made public yesterday.

News of his death spread swiftly through the professional wrestling world.

"Bam Bam had a level of raw, unrefined talent that no one had ever seen before," Paul Heyman, a wrestling promoter and color commentator, said on the World Wrestling Entertainment Web site. "He clearly broke the mold. When else could a guy that size do picture- perfect drop kicks and do moves off the top rope?"

"I learned a lot from being in the ring with him," Peter Senerchia, the wrestler known as "Tazz," said on the WWE site. "He was one of the toughest S.O.B.'s you could ever, ever face in that ring. This is horrible news. He was too young to go."

Though he was always billed as an Asbury Park native -- his signature finishing move was a body slam he called "Greetings from Asbury Park" -- Scott Bigelow grew up in neighboring Neptune, where he was a star wrestler for Neptune High School in the 1970s.

As a senior in 1979, Bigelow was the top-seeded heavyweight in the state wrestling tournament but lost in the semifinals to Matt Lauck of Pitman. Bigelow placed third, finishing the year with a 26-1 record. A year earlier, he made it to the state quarterfinals before being pinned by Bruce Baumgartner of Manchester Regional.

Lauck went on to win the 1979 state tournament, while Baumgartner went on to win four gold medals in the 1984 and 1992 Olympics.

Bigelow went on to the Monster Factory, a professional wrestling academy in Gloucester County. Along with Bam Bam Bigelow, the school boasts wrestling names like The Big Show and King Kong Bundy among its graduates.

"We've had probably 25 superstars, but he was one of the more successful. He had a lot of talent," Ed Atlas, a Monster Factory trainer, said yesterday.

"He was 300-some pounds, but he could jump higher than most 18- or 19-year-old kids half his weight," said Atlas, who was a fellow wrestler-in-training when Bigelow was there in the early 1980s. "He was a very agile big man. That was his claim to fame."

Bigelow made his debut as "Bam Bam" -- the name taken from the hefty infant progeny of Barney and Betty Rubble of "The Flintstones" cartoon -- in 1985. He was picked up two years later by the World Wrestling Federation, which became the WWE.

Later in his career, Bigelow wrestled for World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling -- the conference in which he won the world title in 1997, defeating "Tazz" be fore a hometown crowd in Asbury Park.

But the highlight of Bigelow's career arguably came at Wrestlemania XI in 1995, when he and ex-Giants great Lawrence Taylor faced off in what was called a "grudge match" in the main event. Bigelow lost, but the match was the high water mark of his career in terms of notoriety.

After the match, Taylor -- making his pro wrestling debut -- complimented Bigelow's tenacity, and also took a jab at the notion that wrestling is all fake.

"I threw everything I had at the guy. I pulled no punches," Taylor said at the time. "And when you're lying on the canvas and he's on the top rope about to jump on you, believe me, it's real."

Funeral arrangements are incomplete.

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Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow: 1962-2007

Posted: Jan 21st 2007 By: CMBurnham

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