AEW star Big Bill is in the best shape of his career, engaged to AEW presenter Lexy Nair, and playing the right hand man of Chris Jericho. While he was a fan favorite in WWE alongside EnzoAmore as "Big Cass," his WWE run ended in controversy and led to one of the darkest chapters in his life, which he recently opened up about on "Talk Is Jericho."
"My drinking had gotten completely out of control, and I had done a good job hiding it for a while," Bill recalled. "I was incredibly depressed, self-medicating." Bill then recalled how he started showing up late to the buildings shows were taking place in, which was incredibly out of character for him. In summer 2017, Bill suffered an injury and had to take time off from work to recover. However, the star claims this was bad for his internal demons, as he now had more time than ever to drink.
By the time he was set to return, he simply put a few "band-aids" on his struggles and got his act together. "I thought I could fix this on my own, put the band-aids on, I'll just quit drinking; that's not how it works," he claimed. Bill recalled that he quickly slipped back into his depression and drinking, but then people began to pick up that something was wrong. He admitted that others finally saw how bad things were when he went on the European tour. "So then I got fired because (...) yeah, the European tour, on a bus, I was like just out of control."
Bill and Amore were split up in 2017, right before he suffered the aforementioned injury. Earlier in the podcast, Bill noted that he and Amore had personal issues due to spending too much time together.
"So, we split up, I had a feud with Enzo, I cut a promo on Enzo, you know, when we broke up that was maybe one of my best promos I ever cut," he recalled. "I came to the back, people were congratulating me," he recalled, noting that he feuded with "Big Show" before getting injured.
"Fast forward to 2018, the European Tour, people saw, they knew something was wrong, then I got released," he recalled. Bill said that he was approached by Adam Pearce after a house show match against Bryan Danielson, and was told to see Mark Carrano, but knew this meant he was getting fired. He was then taken to Vince McMahon's office, where they told him he'd soon be released and that he'd be getting help for his addictions, but Bill believed he could do it on his own. "And then I continued to spiral out of control until the seizure in December," he said.
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Talk Is Jericho" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
