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Larger Than Life

Posted: Feb 11th 2007 By: CMBurnham

As she made her way into the neighborhood at the eastern end of town on Jan. 19, far removed from the Gulf Coast real estate boom less than 10 miles away, Janis Remiesiewicz feared the worst.

She and Scott "Bam Bam" Bigelow had their share of arguments over the previous two years, not to mention their motorcycle wreck on a rain-slick highway that nearly killed her. But this was the man she'd fallen in love with, and not hearing from him for three days was highly unusual.

When the massive stranger first walked past her at a local nightclub on Jan. 5, 2004, she knew nothing of things like his 1990 showdown in the Tokyo Dome with former sumo wrestler Koji Kitao, still considered the most watched wrestling event since Hulk Hogan vs. Andre the Giant three years earlier. She had nary a clue about his run-ins with the law or his giving nature that drew plenty of takers.

"He carried himself with such a presence," she recalled, struggling in vain to check her emotions. "He walked into the bar that night with an aura about him. Just relaxed in the way he carried himself, like he floated in."

As their lives intertwined over the next 24 months, Bigelow drew her into the complex world of a fading superstar. One where ghosts from the past and what she hoped was a future together struggled to coexist, revealing human frailties that belied his 6-foot-3, 350-pound frame.

While the pain medications Bigelow had become dependent on helped his battered body, they did little to numb the emotional anguish brought on by several years away from his three children following a divorce and concerns over possible jail time as a result of the motorcycle accident.

Now, it was all a torrent racing through her head as she banged on the front windows, seeing all the lights on at 10 in the morning. Finally, she made her way to the back of the in-law suite in the low-slung stucco structure.

The door was wide open.

Superstar rising

Inside the ring erected at the intersection of the world, Bigelow had Lawrence Taylor in a headlock as he played to the Times Square crowd. Three nights later, they would serve as the main event in WrestleMania XI at the Hartford Civic Center on April 2, 1995, placing the kid from Neptune at the pinnacle of his painful profession.

"WrestleMania is like being in the Super Bowl or the World Series. You could pretty much get hit in the face with a baseball bat and not feel it because so much adrenaline is roaring through you," said Ray Apollo, who wrestled Bigelow, his closest friend, in WrestleMania X in his role as Doink the Clown.

"There's a lot of pressure on you. The place is sold out, it's going out live to millions of people, so there's pressure to perform. And that was a huge thing for Scott when he went against Lawrence Taylor."

A decade earlier, Bigelow was honing his craft in places like Johnstown, Pa., and Prescott, Maine, setting a stage for a meteoric rise to stardom. His first break came in Japan, and by the spring of 1987 he was in World Wrestling Entertainment (then known as the World Wrestling Federation), paired with Hogan in some events. He eventually returned to Japan, spending much of the next six years wrestling there before returning to the WWE in 1993.

"What you have to remember is how big he was and the things he could do," said Afa Anoa'i, who teamed with his brother, Sika, to form The Wild Samoans. "The promoters saw dollar bills in their eyes when they saw him do cartwheels and jump off the top rope. A talent like that you're going to put to work day after day."

But fame and fortune--Bigelow earned as much as $600,000 in his best years, but was responsible for his medical benefits and most of his travel expenses in the U.S.--came at a heavy cost. A grueling travel schedule, often working up to 300 days a year around the world, took him away from his young family and exacted a toll on his body. Reports of drug use by wrestlers, both recreational and performance enhancing, were rampant.

"I can't even describe how tough the schedule was unless you lived through it," Apollo noted. "A lot of times Sunday was a double-shot. You'd wrestle the first match in Milwaukee, and then you'd drive to Chicago and have the first match at Rosemont. Or you'd wrestle in Guam and then cross the dateline and wrestle in Hawaii. So now it's the same day and you haven't slept in 30 hours."

Ironically, Bigelow's loss to Taylor was one of his final big matches for the WWE. By the next year he was back in Japan and wrestling on independent circuits, before spending most of 1997-98 in Extreme Championship Wrestling, where he held the ECW Heavyweight title, ECW Television title, ECW Tag Team title with Diamond Dallas Page, a resident of Point Pleasant, and the ECW Hardcore title. After a three-year stint with World Championship Wrestling, Bigelow's career, for all intents and purposes, ended in 2002.

On the way up

The Tokyo steakhouse was bustling when "Pretty Boy" Larry Sharpe and his 25-year-old protege made their way in with a group from Tokyo Sports, there to do a story on Japan's latest sensation in early 1987.

"They sell the Kobe beef by the gram and the steak they cut off for us was a kilo--2.2 pounds," laughed Sharpe. "I think it was a $1,000 steak!"

Two years earlier this man-giant, with a 60-inch chest, 24-inch neck and 22-inch arms, had darkened the doorway at The Monster Factory, Sharpe's wrestling school in a converted hanger at Burlington County Airport. Within hours Scott Bigelow showed so much athleticism for a big man that Sharpe agreed to house, feed and train the newcomer for a piece of the future action he knew was coming.

The good times included winning the Southern Heavyweight crown in Memphis and a World Class Championship Wrestling title in Fort Worth under the moniker Crusher Yurkof, because the guy signing the checks said he needed a Russian. The bad times included the early-morning call for bail money from Bigelow after his 1986 arrest in Loch Arbour, Monmouth County, stemming from a payment dispute with a prostitute. It resulted in probation and a fine after a charge of making terroristic threats was reduced.

Then, at the Tokyo Airport, Bigelow informed Sharpe his services were no longer needed, with a South Jersey jury confirming his right to break their contract. By May of 1987, Bigelow was making his WWE debut.

"Did I have a good time with Bam Bam? Yes I did. It was exciting," Sharpe said. "You never knew what was going to happen next. But he could be his own worst enemy."

The earliest glimpse into Bigelow's future can be traced back to Neptune's 1979 Shore Conference Wrestling Tournament showdown with top-seeded Toms River South, when a junior heavyweight ended the Indians' dominance of the event.

"The kid didn't realize how quick Scott was," said former Scarlet Fliers coach Bob Teidemann. "The next thing you know Scott's got him in a lateral drop situation. The kid's on his tippy toes and Scott turns toward the Neptune fans and gives a thumbs up. Then he walks the kid towards the South fans, gives a thumbs down and then pins him.

"Scott shouldn't have done that. The place was ready to kill us, but he won the match for us."

His final match as an amateur came a month later when he lost in the state semifinals. He was ruled ineligible for his senior season after an unexplained absence stretched beyond 15 days, thus nullifying an oral scholarship offer from University of Iowa legend Dan Gable. Consequently, Bigelow set out into the world with plenty of pent up anger and few prospects.

He tried arm wrestling, winning the Northeastern States Power Arm Wrestling title in the summer of 1980. By the following year he was a bouncer and full-time troublemaker, with a series of arrests in 1981 earning him a nine-month jail sentence for aggravated assault.

Bigelow also tried his hand at bounty hunting, answering an ad in the Asbury Park Press from a man whose Mexican wife had run off with their son. That landed him in a Mexico City prison for six more months.

A "good" heart

It was the mid-1990s, the exact date having faded in a haze of body slams and 300-mile drives. The WWE show at Madison Square Garden had gone well, and everyone was invited back to the Bigelow's Wayside, Ocean Township, home for a barbecue, with the likes of Doink, Razor Ramon, the Smoking Gunns and Shawn Michaels practicing their moves from the diving board of the Bigelow's pool.

"They were just my dad's friends. I didn't even know them by their wrestling names," said Bigelow's oldest son, Shane, a freshman football player at Widener (Pa.) University. "I remember I had a birthday party when I was 7 or 8 and we had a water balloon fight, my friends against the wrestlers."

Bigelow proved his courage in July 2000 when he rescued three children, ages 5, 8, and 9, from a burning home at 3:30 a.m., suffering second-degree burns on over 40 percent of his body that put him in the hospital for almost two months.

According to those who knew him best, Bigelow was as good a friend as you could have. Anoa'i recalled an incident where his late nephew, Yokozuna, could not make a show he put together in Northampton, Pa. He made a desperate call to Bigelow, who was fishing off the New Jersey coast, and he made it to the ring just in time.

The down side was that Bigelow attracted more than his share of hangers on during his career. Saying "no" was not one of his strong suits.

"He was a good-hearted person," Anoa'i said. "That was one of his big problems. There are some people who take advantage of a good heart, and that's what happened to the Bammer."

As Bigelow's star began to fade, his marriage started to disintegrate. While he was able to spend more time with his children, with the ECW and WCW requiring less time on the road, his relationship with his wife, Dana, unraveled, with the two separating in 2002.

He bought a house in West Allenhurst, where he lived for two years before he was charged with endangering the welfare of a child in Mercer County in May 2004 after he was pulled over for erratic driving. He claimed to have suffered a seizure after taking too much pain medication, and eventually pleaded guilty to DUI as a result of the medication.

Bigelow sought refuge in rural Lake Ariel, Pa., in the Pocono Lakes region, opening Bam Bam Bigelow's Hamburger Joint. The specialty was the one-pound "Beast Burger," and if you finished one you got a picture with the proprietor mounted on the wall.

It was only open a few months, and when he arrived in Florida the following January his money was pretty much gone.

THE END

When she entered the house and found the body, Remiesiewicz placed her head on his massive chest and said one final goodbye to the man she had hoped to spend her life with, before calling the police.

"Now I have to make a new plan," she said. "The problem is I really liked the old plan."

The beginning of the end came when Bigelow lost control of his brother Todd's Harley-Davidson on a Hernando County highway on Oct. 2, 2005. He and Remiesiewicz, who was placed in a coma to save her life, eventually recovered, but Bigelow was later charged with DUI with bodily injury, which could have been punishable by up to five years in prison.

With little to no memorabilia surrounding him, his prize possessions were the pictures of his three children, Shane, Colton and Ricci, that rested on the fireplace mantle. He was eking out an existence on a $700-a-month social security disability check, as his bills mounted.

Remiesiewicz would later tell police about what she viewed as his increasingly paranoid behavior. A recently purchased hand gun was sitting, unloaded, on top of the microwave. Still, Bigelow had been attending church with her, was catching up on his child support, and seemed optimistic about putting his life back together.

"He sounded great the last time I spoke with him," Shane Bigelow said. "He sounded like he was finally getting comfortable with his situation."

How did he die?

Some say it was from a broken heart, missing precious time with his children. Others contend the 45-year-old succumbed to a profession that grinds up top athletes like no other.

"It's scary," Apollo added. "I've got group pictures where I'm the only one still alive."

The medical examiner's office will have its say when the toxicology reports are released, although foul play is not suspected. But regardless of the findings, it was a sad ending for someone whose life had been so colorful.