Big Show Makes Surprise Return on ‘Monday Night Raw’

The Big Show is back!

In his first appearance since September, “The World’s Largest Athlete” cut a promo on in front of the Monday Night Raw crowd in Houston, Texas on Monday, to introduce Team Texas for the upcoming Special Olympics.

Show was last seen on Raw on the September 4 episode, where he lost a steel cage match against Braun Strowman and was powerslammed through one of the cage walls afterwards. It was later reported the attack was WWE‘s way of writing Show off television so he could undergo hip surgery.

In March the former world champion said in an interview with UPI that he would “definitely” be back in time for WrestleMania 34 in New Orleans in April. But the event came and went and there was no sign of the big man. He was then expected to be a surprise entrant in the Greatest Royal Rumble event in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia weeks later, but was once again absent. Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported Show suffered an injury in early April.

“Big Show was injured about three weeks ago again he was coming back from his injury and he got reinjured,” Meltzer reported. “So that’s why he wasn’t in the match. I don’t know how severe but it was severe enough. They wanted him in this match you could tell because look at all those big guys they brought in and except for [the Great Khali] you know [Big Show] is the biggest guy.”

Show revealed on an episode of Busted Open Radio that part of what held him back from returning sooner was dealing with a post-surgery infection.

“The surgery went really well, I had it done in New York. Got home, I was posting some stuff on Instagram three and a half weeks after surgery I was walking a mile, over a mile, things were coming along good. Then I got a fever. I found out that I had a surgical infection. Which is, I guess, the more I find out about these metal implants and stuff like that it’s quite high, there’s a high probability of it. I just got the unlucky draw,” he explained.

Originally debuting in WCW in 1995, Show has been a fixture of the professional wrestling world for more than two decades. The 46-year-old is a seven-time world champion, and is the only man in wrestling history to win the WCW World Heavyweight, WWE, World Heavyweight and ECW World Championships.