[1998-06-25-WCW-Thunder] The Giant promo

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Vincent comes out for everybody's promos, no matter what. The Giant is still smoking. He challenges Sting and Nash to put the tag titles on the line later that night. This is here mainly to show the absurdity of Giant's smoking gimmick.

[soup23]

Giant lights it up on the way to the ring and challenges for the tag straps tonight. Not much of note was said here.

[PeteF3]

It's not like it's an insulting or horrible gimmick or anything, but the only real positive of it came when Disco Inferno asked him, "Don't you know that stuff is gonna stunt your growth?"

[TravJ1979]

He's just biding time.

[DMJ]

I just watched GAB 98' and The Giant walking down the aisle with a cigarette is just awesome. It is just so absurd and great.

 

Two reasons I love it -

 

First, it almost feels like a rib. Not only does the cigarette look comical in Big Show's catcher's glove of a hand, but I feel like the "gimmick" came from someone (Nash maybe?) seeing Big Show smoke a cigarette in real life, laughing at how funny it looked, and then saying, "You gotta do that on TV" even though it isn't really all that "heelish" anyway.

 

Second, the commentators, at least at GAB 98', play up the relevancy of the smoking by talking about how it was one of the factors that led to The Giant's split with Sting...even though it really wasn't. The Giant joined nWo Hollywood and Sting wouldn't join and then The Giant turned on him and Sting was saved by the Wolfpack. I just love the fact, though, that even if it is revisionism, Schiavone and Tenay had to describe a world where Sting and The Giant were the principal characters in an after-school special about tobacco use.