SYSK Live: Andre the Giant

my neck. I would welcome that as well. Well, that's what I was setting you up for when I said what else. I appreciate that. We'll see you guys. You can get all the info and tickets you need on s Y s K Live dot com or s F sketch Fest dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,

and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles w Chuck, Brian Jerry's not here, but all of these beautiful, wonderful people are at Plaza Live in Orlando, Florida, our Cineo Hall. Stuff going on back there. Yeah, like Florida. Um yeah, woo indeed, thank you for that. Toto is playing here next week. I could relive my childhood. Yeah, quke on the sand, people pulling up their shoes. For those of you at home, you'll just never Jerry just

got all that out. So before we get started, Actually, if you guys will indulge me, I would like to dedicate this show, uh to a very special woman named Alice Harrison, who also happens to have been Jumie's grandma. And she passed on Monday, so she is actually a fellow Floridian. She lived outside of Tampa for most of her life. Um had like parrots and peacocks, like super Florida, right, and she was just a very wonderful woman. So I want to dedicate this show to Alice Harrison in her memory.

Everyone very nice, thanks great, thanks for that. And EM's here and she's very proud of you right now, yeah you um so uh. We didn't really just bring you here to talk about's grandma exclusively. We asked you all here tonight to talk to you about legends, and in particular one legend. No oh man, the crowd showder is rarely funny, well done. This legend was something drunk right, already deep in this early in the show. Not that's the last one you get though, so uh, this legend

was even better than Zelda. This legend's name was Andre Giant. And by the way, if you're not a fan, I know this is Florida, But if you're not a fan of wrestling, they're like, what are you? What are you talking about? Fear not, I'm not a fan of wrestling. You're not a real fan of wrestling. This is interesting stuff. We wouldn't bring you something so niche that only wrestling fans would enjoy. Trust us. In fact, you can make the case that if you are a wrestling fan you

might not like this. Just excuse yourself. So to start at the beginning, Andre the Giant was not born under the Giant. He was born Andre renee rusom Off May in Columier, France, which is a town that is close to where he was raised in a French farming town called Mullan. I'm sorry, I don't have peanut butter in

my mouth and um in Mullion. He was raised by his parents, Boris and Maryanne ruce him Off, who were of Bulgarian Polish descent, respectively, and he was the third of five siblings, and he was born at eleven pounds, which were told is kind of big. I heard a couple of women gasps. Someone sucked airs through their teeth. Yeah, Boris Russomof, I'm surprised he's Bulgarian with that name. Terry cut that one. You can't just cut everything, sure, we can.

You gotta put yourself out there, live on the edge like that. Boris Russomof's Bulgarian. Who would have thunk it? There? You go? Alright? Who would have cut that one too? So they were a family of farmers, and he worked on the family farm, as did all the kids. I think he was the third of five children. And here's one thing that may or may not be true, but

an interesting little tidbit will throw out. Supposedly, when he was in school along with the other children, uh there in rural France, they would occasionally get rides in the pickup truck to school from playwright Samuel Beckett. Yeah right, that's the appropriate response to that, like a little surprise, but not like totally blown away. But little Andre it was never little because he was eleven pounds at birth. He began to grow very early. All of his siblings

and even his parents. We're all just sort of average size, so no one knew what was coming when a little Andre, by the age of twelve, was six ft tall and wade two and forty pounds. And so his parents, being farmers, were like, yes, yes, we have an ox yeah for our third child. And uh, they were pretty happy about this. And Andre said, don't get too comfortable, because in two years I'm gonna quit school in eighth grade and go

find my fortunes in Paris. And he did. And it's one of those things where when you're researching and telling people that he went to Paris to find his fortunes after dropping on the eighth grade, if you stop and think about it, imagine getting your fourteen year old son moved to Paris by himself to go find his fortune. It's a different time. Those are cool parents, very cool parents. So maybe they just didn't miss him. They had four

others wandering around. No, but I'm sure that they tried to talk him out, but they're like, he swing a scythe like no one I've ever seen who's gonna pull the cart right. So he did. He actually started to find his fortune is not the best fortune but he found some he started moving furniture. Figure he just kind of threw uh, he just kind of threw couches through the doorways upstairs, that kind of stuff. Sure. Um. And then later he became a professional rugby player. Um, which

is okay, it's getting closer and closer. But rugby actually led him inadvertently and accidentally into the world of wrestling. That's right, because he trained at a gym as a rugby player along with some other wrestlers. There were wrestlers that trained there with him, and one day one of the wrestlers got hurt. They looked around the gym and they said, hey, huge human, come over here, forget rugby.

You should wrestle with us. Because it was France, and they say wrestle uh, And he did and he really took to it, and before you know it, he was touring as a pro wrestler in Japan, Africa, and New Zealand, and in Japan in particular, he had this persona named um was it Monster rusom Off. Well he had a few names, right, yeah, um he Well, he wrestled under the Butcher was one, yeah, Andre the Butcher rusom Off. So so one was the French giant, which is way

too on the nose. It's just like the American podcaster if I were a wrestler or something like that, you know, And then another can you imagine I would get my ass kicked every match, not if you were right in the match. By the way, everybody, Oh yeah, well, I guess we should just cut to the chase wrestling is fake end of the podcast. Um, And then the other one, Chuck. What was the third one? Well, the third one, I think we can all agree is the best, maybe best

wrestling name of all time. Monster Eiffel Tower. You imagine, like what does it do? Is like the the second the gap between the second and third stories, like the mouth they eat there's it bends over and like like jabs you or something. It just doesn't make any sense if you really think about it. It's pretty good. Though

they ate it up in Japan. Though they did so in JAPANI had a different name, Monster russom Off, and Monster russomo Off was what in wrestling parlance is called a heel a bad guy, right, And in Japan, Andre really ate that up, like in the ring and outside of the ring. Um, at matches, he would he would taunt the fans on the streets. So he's a big celebrity on the street. Um, if somebody took a picture of him, he chased him down and break their camera.

He loved being a heel right, all in good fun, right, Tell that to the Japanese guy who had to go buy another key because monster russom Off broke the other one and none of his friends would believe him. So he eventually went to Europe to wrestle, and there he wrestled under the name Jean Fare, which is a play on the term or the name Grand Fair, who was a hero in French folklore who would kill English invaders? Uh? Or colonial? I can never say that word colonially and

the colonists you're adding like five or six extra sill colonialists. Colonists. No colonialists, No, that's just wrong. Who says colonialism colonialism? They're colonialists, right, No colonial like a bird colonists, guys, colonists right, Okay, I'm not losing my mind. Colonialists right here, that's where it is a melting COI This usually didn't happen so later in the show. Someone snorting makes you

feel a lot better. So regardless of what they called the English invaders colonists in folklore, Grand Fair would kill them with an axe. And he was this big French hero in the storybooks. And so Jean Fair was a play on that name, right, And so when he became Genfair, he became a hero in the wrestling world. Or what's known is a baby face or a face. You got heels and faces. Everyone in this room doesn't know that already, right.

So as gen Fair, he became pretty big around Europe, so much so that there's a legend that he told himself once in an interview we read where he went back home. Uh, like aged nineteen, I think so, I've been about five years since he left home. He went back home after he'd made it. He shows up in a rolls Royce, goes up to the door and knocks on it and says, hey, how are you doing? Mom

and dad? And they didn't recognize him at first, but they did recognize gen Fair, their favorite wrestler who had just shown up on their doorstep and said, I'm your son. They've been watching him all this time, and Andre the Giant had changed so much they didn't recognize them. They just became fans of gen Fair. I really want to believe that. I do too. Even if it's b S, it's still a pretty great story. But it'd be like if if like um Stone called Steve Austin showed up

on your doorst was like, I'm your son. It's basically the same, the same thing. It's just a different person. That's right. He's really trying to keep it together here, everybody, Yeah, this is good. Florida's forgiving God. This didn't happen in Maine. We have to cut that part out. Those manners have come for us. I've seen that last some more people asleep in the audience in Maine. We've seen that before. Very disconcerting. Just so you know, if you're in the

first five rows, please just stay awake. I'm used to it. If you don't even have to laugh, just stay awake. That's your job tonight. Did you see your partners start to fall asleep? Just give him one of those. It's

very disconcerting. Basically, we're watching you. So around nineteen seventy, Andrea was working with a man named Eduard Carpentier, the Flying Frenchman, and he was a wrestler, believe it or not, turned promoter, and he claimed and that there are a lot of tall tales in this story and we're not sure which ones are true. But he claimed that he met Andre when he was driving down the road in France and there was a redwood tree that had fallen, and Andrea emerged and moved the tree. I think that

one might not be true. Sounds pretty good though. That's a good story, but that's not true. But he figures in very important to Andre's life because he took him to Quebec to wrestle le gen Fair and made a very important introduction to a man named Vince McMahon sr. Oh yeah, okay, okay, So Vince McMahon senior for those of you, the five of you who don't know who he is. He was a big time wrestling promoter at a time when wrestling in America was regional, right, It

was not a nationwide thing. It was the country was cut up into different regions. And Vince McMahon was the head of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation, the w w w F. Because apparently Vince McMahon didn't know that worldwide is one word serious, they put it on marketing materials and everything. He would go on to shorten that later yeah, later on, his son would correct the massive spelling error that his father had started years before. But before that, Mr mcman

had this really great idea. He said, you Joan Fair, We're going to change that name in a minute. You are really something special. Rather than put you on one circuit or one town or whatever, just sticking to one region where you're gonna, you know, be huge at first and then just kind of become whatever, just a so so guy. I'm gonna take you from region to region

around the country and promote you. And he did, and in doing so, Andre the Giant became one of the nation's first wrestling stars because he went from town to town and it was a big deal when he came to town. Every time it was a really big deal. They would start promoting the storylines ahead of time, because, as we said, wrestling is fake. So they would drove up these stories about this giant that would come to town.

And because all the heels were getting out of hand in Memphis or in Jacksonville or wherever, and so they would bring in Andre to get them all in line. And the big Giant's gonna come into town. He's a good guy, and he's huge and no one's ever seen anything like him, and that really got people in the seats and really dig way like the promoters would charge more than than was normal because they knew that people who are going to pay it to come to Andrea

set the universe right again. Right um. In America, he finally got the name Andre the Giant. I believe it was Vince McMahon sor who gave who gave him that name. And he debuted in nineteen seventy three at Madison Square Gardens as Andrea the Giant, and he was builed as the eighth Wonder of the World. At seven ft four in is five hundred and twenty pounds, right, yeah, yeah. He wrestled I think between four fifty and five twenty for most of his career except at the end and

WrestleMania three. There are reports that he weighed as much as six fifty lot and you could tell he was not in the best of shape at that point. Well he was six fifty. Yeah, this story will we'll get sad at some point, so just get ready his time. Sorry, his height, his height is in dispute. Basically, there are people who have dedicated entire websites to trying to prove that Andre the Giant was seven ft four inches, but

most credible sources say, nice about six ft seven inches. Um. Some people say maybe he was towards the end of his career, but he underwent back surgery six and they removed some vertebrae there, so he was seven ft four inches and they shrunk him down to six ft seven inches. And most people say, you live in your mom's basement, don't you, And that ends the argument every single time. I'm not a back surgeon. I don't think that's how that works. I don't think it's that one vertebrae out, dude,

let's get another one out. The good news is your back one hurt, but you're eight inches shorter, right, I don't think that's how it works. So, uh, he was truly enormous, though there are other great stories. One is that his wrists were nearly a foot in diameter. Right. Yeah, we're like so everybody, that's just plainly obvious, an enormous wrist. But we had no frame of reference except for my tiny wrist, right, which we know is not a foot mine's not either. Um, So we went to the slender

wrist dot com and that is a real website. We said, what is the average human man's wrists circumference? And we found out it's seven inches seven point four inches, So his is about five inches bigger around than the average man's wrist, which is huge, which I guess we should have just stuck to a foot in circumfort. You know, I shouldn't have explained that into the ground. Well, I just like knowing there's a website called the Slender Wrist

dot com, and then I'm not on it. So he wore a size twenty six wrestling boot just for comparison. Shaquille O'Neil was very large man started out his career playing for a little team called the Orlando Magic. He wears a twenty two andre were six so uh what else? There were other legends he could pass a silver dollar coin through his rings. Uh. And then another one that I don't think it's true that he had two hearts

and multiple rows of teeth like a monster. And apparently Rick Flair, the nature boy, Um, we're in the right place. He he believed both of those, the heart one and the teeth one, and whenever he was talking to the giant, he said that he was like kind of trying to look into his mouth while he was talking. We've met Rick Flair. He totally believed that, Yeah, we can attend. He for some reason was a guest star on our

TV show that we had. Maybe that was one reason why it wasn't so great, you know, I think he was the reason it wasn't totally terribly. It was a good little guest appearance. We found out the day of that he was coming to shoot. That's right, it's a weird day. So he was ridiculously strong though. He would do with this little party trick where when his friends were in a bar, he would move their cars. It's a little small European cars, like not with the keys right,

he would pick it up and move it. He also there's footage of him lifting a two thousand pound weight. Like, you try to lift two thousand pounds, you can't do it. Has anyone ever tried to lift two thousand pounds? I'm not trying, well, believe me, you can't do it. And he tried to lift twenty pounds. He's there picking picking up a two thousand I mean, I presume it was a two thousand pound weight. It was a weight that said two thousand pounds on it. What way eight lines,

you know, and it wasn't a cartoon. The thing. The thing is he um he was feared because of his strength by other wrestlers, not because he was known to be like a malicious, brutal guy, but because just one slip in wrestling you could he could really injure somebody. But he almost never did because he had he was a genuinely good wrestler. That's one of the things about Andre the Giant. Confetti. There's confetti, there's been the steady stream of confetti fallen the whole thing. The flaming lips

might have played here like night. So Under the Giant was a legitimately good wrestler. Yeah, into that paragraph. So his his English was never great, you know. He was born and raised in France and could speak English, but not not the greatest. And he also just put a pin in this. He had a medical condition that we're going to get back to you later. But because of that condition as well, enunciating was a little difficult for him.

So a lot of people thought that he was just this big dummy, this big brute, and that was not true at all. He was a very smart guy. Very savvy businessman, a great showman, very observant, and very shrewd. He was not just some big oath in a singlet right, No, he wasn't. Um to help him though with that language barrier when he moved from Quebec down in North America or down in the United States, I guess technically Quebec

is in North America. Technically Um. He hired a guy named Frank Valois, and Frank val Wall was a referee on the Quebec circuit who served as his interpreter um and he hung out with him for a few years, and then he just became like a friend of his rather than somebody worked with And that was kind of par for the course with Andre the Giant. Compared to other sports stars, he had a very small, if non

existent entourage. He didn't have the hangers on and the toady's and the lackeys and the agents and like the the drug dealers or whoever else do you have hanging around you if you're never took no no um. He was a bit of a loner, but the friends he had were like true, legitimate friends. So he was kind

of an anomaly in that sense in the sports world. Yeah, and apparently he did have a very pretty strict list, and you were either a friend or you're an enemy, and once you were on that list, you were kind of on it for life. His list of friends was very long because he was a good guy and really loved people. But he did have a few enemies in

the in the wrestling world. One was Big John stud who was another very large man who wrestled, and he allegedly called Andrea's circus freak once once, And as you will see as we go on, Andrea was a very sensitive guy about his size and he didn't want to be called a circus freak. Who does, so it's a good point. Um. He also had a thing with the iron cheek for reasons that are unclear. Um. He also had a very long standing beef with Randy the Macho

Man Savage. That's right, And this one boils down to the fact that Randy like to oil up. He would baby oil himself, which was a common thing in wrestling because I guess shiny muscles read on camera. I don't know, I'm not sure that's not why I oil up, but apparently it looks better on TV. And so Randy would oil up in a big way, baby, And people would tell Randy like, Andre doesn't like the oil in the wrestling match, so like, can you just when you wrestle him,

can he not oil up? And he said, no, I gotta oil up right. As as an aside, by the way, everybody is one of the tragic unknown facts of Randy the Macho Man Savages life that he was physically incapable of snapping into his own slim gym because his fingers were so oily. You had to walk around in the street begging common strangers to snap into a slim gym for him, just denigrating himself. Sad. Apparently, uh that's good.

Apparently years later, Uh, Andre has has a daughter named Robin, and she wasn't super close with her dad, and we're gonna get to that a little bit more. It was very sad, but she was trying to get information about her dad and get stories from wrestler from wrestlers and friends, and she went to Randy Savage and he said, I wish I could tell you more, but your dad just didn't like me. I had nothing but the utmost respect

for him, but he just didn't like me. And then he just slipped and slid down the street and that's the last anyone ever saw him. That's great, so um. When when Andrea was wrestling one of his enemies, he would dole out like a little more punishment than than was normal. And one of the punishments he had reserved for Macho Man in particular, was he would throw him down to the mat, step on his hair, and then yank him up and leave like tufts of hair on

the mat behind him. And he did this for two reasons. One clearly, it hurts to have tufts of hair pulled out of your head. But also he knew Macho Man was very sensitive about losing his hair, so he would yank it out by the footfall. Kind of meat that size ftfull right exactly, that's a lot of hair. His friends, he liked to mess with two because he was a very fun guy in the ring and you know, what are you gonna do to Andre the giant? Like he kind of ran the show when he was in there,

So he would mess around with his buddies. Hacksaw Jim Duggan told a story one time about Andre choking him with a strap he had that he was very famous for that one single old school wrestling singlet he choked him with that strap and then would wring out the sweat into his mouth. Oh just wait, are you gonna make me say this? That He also would um like push his opponent down, sit on them and fart, and

that sounds pretty bad. But it turns out that in Andre the Giant fart lasted apparently no joke for like thirty seconds, Like they would cut to commercial break and come back and they'd still be farting on this person. And somebody just google Andre the Giant fart and they're like dozens of stories. Someone I can't remember who who said it, but somebody in an interview called it an event. I I think, uh, what, this is going pretty well,

don't you think you guys think it's going all right? Well, that means that we might release this, which means then that we have to work in a message break. So we're gonna do that. If you guys will bear with us, we will be right back after these messages. All right, We're back, everybody. That's how it working. So I don't know if you remember where we left off, but Andre the Giant was parting on people and we went to commercial break, and he went to commercial break just like

I said. So what happened uh in his career was he got really famous for being what's called the King of the Cage match. And if you don't know what wrestling is, uh, and cage matches are also called a battle royals when they would literally put a cage around the ring and they would put twenty dudes in there and they would all just fake hit each other until no one could fake hit anymore, and then the last man standing was the victor. And Andre really dominated these matches.

He was known as King of the Cage Match, which actually that's right, um because it wasn't a joke. That was so um. Once he hit the American circuit um, his star rose very very quickly. By the mid seventies, he was the highest paid wrestler in the world. He was listed as such in the Guinness Book of World Records. They said that he made a smooth four K that year in nineteen seventy four, which is a lot of

cheese bank cheese. There's a lot of cheese now, but it's cute now when you look at athletes are taken in But he was one of the highest paid athletes period in the world. He was, and he was also one of the most famous that There was one profile of them in Sports Illustrated that said that, with the possible exception of Muhammad Ali, he was the most recognizable active figure in sports in the world. That's super famous, that's right. And so what are you gonna do when

you're a super famous wrestler. You're gonna start being on TV. And he did this a lot. He would show up and if you were around in the seventies and eighties and you watched network television, like the rest of his dead, you might see him pop up on b J and the Bear. Right, people in Maine had no idea what b J and the Bear was. Stunned silence. He was

in a two parter, b J and the Bear. Uh. He played Bigfoot a little on the nose in an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, And there was this one scene where Lee Major's, a star of Six Million Dollar Man, was supposed to get thrown across the room by Bigfoot Andre the Giant, and he was a little worried that he was going to get hurt, and he was very pleased to find out that Andre the Giant was, Like we said, a very skilled athlete and

knew how to do this stuff. But he sold the He sold the pounce basically, And if you really stop and think about the subtext of that, it strongly suggests that Lee Majors thought pro wrestling was real. Yes, it's quite possible. I thought he was just gonna injure me. I mean he jumped on me. From what else was he end? He was in ConA in The Destroyer alongside Schwarzenegger, Wilt Chamberlaine, and Grace Jones. Weirdest cast in movie history was a weird chance. But it holds up, does it?

I mean it didn't hold up originally, so it hasn't gotten any worse about that. It holds up as well as it ever did exactly. He He was on a very famous Honeycomb's commercial where he played a giant but but wait for it, a medieval giant invading a treehouse full of kids because he was hungry for a big honey taste. That's my andre. The giant press is good, pretty terrible. He did honey Combs, by the way in

the end. Uh. And there was also a very weird time in the eighties where the singer Cindy Lauper somehow got involved in pro wrestling and would have She would go to events and take part in some events and then would have wrestlers being her videos. The eighties were weird everybody. It was a very strange time, but it just sort of signifies what a big pop culture icon Andre the Giant was. He really was. He got the big hoist at the end of the Goonies theme video.

He did, Yeah, that's like, that's the big shot. That's the one you want, you know, the hoist hoisting Cyndey Lauper. Everybody's gonna pay attention to that one. Uh. He also liked the ladies, but by all accounts he was a

true gentleman. Uh. There's a quote here from one of his friends who said, everywhere he goes there are women, women, women who range wildly in socio economic level, age, and even interest in pro wrestling, and he treats them all the same splendid lye Andre simply enjoys the company of women, and they enjoy his So he seems like a good dude. He was, even by today's standards, so um. As wealthy and famous as he was, he had extremely simple tastes like don't forget. He was raised a farm boy in

France and he definitely never lost his roots. So his favorite things to do were like hanging out with friends unless he wanted to be alone, UM, playing cards and specifically Uno and cribbage, where his games big time, so so much so fans here, so get this, Andre the Giant love cribbs so much that he would be playing at backstage constantly and sometimes he would put off going out into the ring during a televised match because he hadn't finished his cribbage game yet. He had to finish

that first before he went out there. So he was like cribbage for life, c for l scribbage with a c okay making sure Whennik had to cut that part out. So now we're gonna get to the part where we talk about Andre the Giants drinking. Um. If you know anything about the guy, if you saw the documentary on HBO, UM, you know that he drank a lot, a lot because he liked to drink and he was humongous. Put those

two things together and you get statistics like this. He was estimated to have consumed about seven thousand calories of alcohol per day. It's right, somebody went bud break Toto, I remember you. Uh. An average day or an average beer drinking sesh, he would plow down fifty two cans of beer this is a normal day, or eleven bottles

of red wine. One wrestler talked about um one match where Andre drank six bottles of wine before he wrestled the match, and like, no one could tell, literally nobody could tell he was He was famous for drinking planes dry of their mini bottles, like just gone, Like sorry, everybody, you can't have your bloody Mary because Andre the giants here, and he drank all the liquor on the plane. And as far as beers go, the most beers he ever drank in one sitting, the highest number we've seen is

one hundred and fifty six in one sitting. In some people more cautious souls are like, don't be foolish. Of course, he didn't drink a hundred beers. You drink somewhere between a hundred hundred fifty six is the truth. That's astounding. Uh. And he could hold it. But none of this is to say that he didn't get drunk, because he he would definitely get drunk. You can't drink a hundred nineteen beers. Eventually it's going to affect even the largest cow in

the field. So there were stories of him. Uh. One time he and Dusty Rhodes stole horse drawn carriages in New York City and rode them around the park. A couple of stories about him passing out, like he would make it back to the hotel and just flop on the floor of the lobby and what do you do, bell hop, move this man. Nope. So there are two stories, one that they just threw a piano cover over him and another one and this is the best, that they just made him a feature. They just put put a

velvet rope around him. It was like the eighth Wonder of the World right there. And charges of nickel per visit here. M snor smell was part. It's an event. Amazing. So um, it wasn't all salad days for Andre the Giant. While he was wrestling. When he was in Japan, when he was first starting out back in around nineteen UM, he made a rare visit to the doctor. He hated

going to the doctor, hated medicine, hated anything like that. Um, But he went to see the doctors in Japan and while he was there, they diagnosed him with the condition. The condition Chuck was referring to earlier called acromegaly, and acromegaly is a pro tuitary gland disorder that causes gigantism. So Andre the Giant was by definition a giant. And while he was there at the doctor's office, they said, um, you know this is actually something we can easily correct.

We used to to kind of get in there and you you have a legion or a tumor on your protutory glam. We can treat it and this will cease, this will stop. And he said, no, it's okay. And they said, well, wait a minute. If you don't do this, you're probably not gonna make it past fifty. He said, I said that's okay, and he leaves. And twelve years later he goes to the hospital again and the doctors

do the same thing. Different doctors at Duke University. They diagnosed him with acromegle and they say, we can treat this, and he said, no, I'm all good. He said, if this is the size God wanted me to be, then this is the size I'm going to remain. Very sweet. He uh, he might have thought he would shrink or something, because part of it was a business decision. He thought he didn't he couldn't lose his wrestling career by having

a surgery. I don't know if they didn't explain it to him well or not, Like maybe he was just a little younger, because he was he continued to grow into his thirties. He was still growing right, and with acromegle in particular, UM, it causes obviously, it's a runaway growth hormone that's being produced by your petteritary plan because something's leaning on it. And um, from this, you keep growing and growing well into your thirties, and your bones

grow too, and often in like strange ways. So your face facial features just change. Um, your bones get way denser and bigger than than it would be normal. Um, you also have secondary stuff like carpal tunnel and arthritis and diabetes and things like this. So, um, it's not a good condition to have. And it also can be very psychologically damaging too. And you could say that it definitely had an impact on the psyche of Andre the

Giant as well. Yeah, it was very sad he was you know, you think about the world that sort of made for average sized folks, and you don't think about the fact that being seven foot four or seven ft tall or six eight in five hundred pounds and what that does to your life and just moving around in the world, and it was tough on him. He would find himself seated like on the floor of a van because he couldn't sit in the seat. Um, think about

when he's flying on a plane. There are pictures of him on airplanes where he's occupying three rows of seats, which is great because he was rich and famous and they could accommodate him. But think about going to the bathroom, Like I can barely fit in an airplane bathroom. They're terrible.

Under the Giant couldn't even think about it. So he had to suffer indignities like getting flight attendants to hold up curtains so he could urinate in a bucket on a flight, like on a long flight if he couldn't hold it that long, and everyone on the plane would just suddenly talk very loudly about anything but the fact that Under the Giant was peeing into an ice bucket right over there by the way, Randy the matchaman Stabbors, you could pop right into any airplane bathroom. Please right in.

I slipped right in. Oh man, nice callback. But like I said, he did have money and he was famous, so they could accommodate him as much as possible. Ben So McMahon. But this extra large van that was super beefed up and it had the roof popped up in an extra large couch inside. I know this is Florida's You're all like, so a van, right? He had a party van, is what you're saying. Yeah, there's like a wizard writing a unicorn peting on the side. You know,

a van. They're driven by man. But there's one very sad quote he had where he said, I would give much money to be able to spend one day per week as a man of regular size. I would shop, I would go to the cinema, and I would drive around in a sports car or walk down Fifth Avenue and stare at other people for a change. Yeah, oh it's right, because here's the thing. He had two choices every day, or really one choice. He could either hide or go out and endure the spotlight. Because I think

it was whole. Cogan said, you know, other wrestlers can put on it. Dis Guys can go like find a dark corner in a bar or restaurant just kind of lay low under the giant couldn't do that. Whether he was a famous wrestler or not, the world felt entitled to gawk at him whenever he was out on the street.

And because he was famous, that actually didn't help. It actually made things worse because when he went to bars, um drunks would try to pick fights with them or pull knives on him, and he'd have to like break their ribs just to get him to go away, which he did actually, Um. And then even people who didn't pull knives could still get to them, like they would just be like, jeez, look at that on that guy. He's huge, you know, that kind of stuff as he's

walking down the street. And he would actually cry and private like he was a very sensitive guy and that kind of stuff got to him. Terry, we'll retake this in the studio. He loved kids, but uh, kids were afraid of him, which was very heartbreaking. Um. He was very gentle with kids, he said, I try to be very soft with children. I don't want them to fear me. But often when I go to the homes of people who have kids that will run for me, even though

they've seen me on television. I understand why they do this, but it's a sad feeling for me even so. So, it's a pretty surprising paradox that somebody who's who's all like the sum total of their issues would be found in this condition and who had such trouble making it through the world would choose pro wrestling as a career because he had to travel all the time, Like during the seventies, he would wrestle three hundred and thirty to three hundred and forty nights a year, almost always in

a different city every night. Like this is someone who really valued a leap year, you know what I mean, Like it meant something to him when he got breaks though, those rare breaks that he would get, he would go home. And his home in the United States ended up being in North Carolina in a town called Ellerby, Uh. He bought a ranch there in ninety seven, little ranch house and acre wasn't over the top. It was very kind

of a modest home. But he loved the land. He had Rottweiler's and he had cattle, and he had horses, and he had a Honda a TV that he would ride around. Um there was this couple Frenchie and Jackie that were his some of his best friends, and they kind of took care of the place while he was gone. And that was really um, that's really where he went to to just be Andre the Giant, where he knew that he was among friends and loved ones and wouldn't be stared and talked at. He also get this, I

didn't realize this. You mean told me this today. He had a fish camp called Giants Fish Camp in Stepner, Florida, near Sara Sota. Has anybody ever heard of it? Yeah, well, apparently that was Andre the Giants Fish Camp. And it turns out my father in law and he's grandpa, who's my father in law's dad, regardless of your grandpa in law. Yeah, they would go fishing at this fish camp with Andre the Giant. Like my father in law used to go

fishing with Andre the Giant. And he said, Andrea the Giant used to carry this like custom aid at or on deck chair with special cushions around in the back of his pickup truck because this was like the chair. He considered it was his chair. And he would sell rings off of his giant fingers that he had autographed and apparently he gave one to my father in law. Yes, and he doesn't know where it is. Yeah, a man

is right, we'll find him one day. I just pictured him telling you the story over dinner as he takes like this napkin ring off and just sets it on the table and nobody knows that or a bracelet just kind of slyly slides off of his hand. Yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. Oh and um, so you mean's grandpa and Andre the Giant would speak Polish to one another. Yeah, yeah, gets some Polish people in the audience.

Like all right, I thought you're gonna say it was like, you mean's prom choker or something, right, so you know, the the classic prom choker from Andre the Giant sweaty fingers. So um. He also shopped on QBC a lot on another little fact about him, very cute. So by the early nineteen eighties, Uh, by this point it was the WWF. It was um a really really big spectacle in the US, and they had Andre the Giant to thank for a lot of this um everywhere he went. It was a

big deal. It was getting TV viewers from around the world more into wrestling and wrestlers benefited just from wrestling with him. Even losing against him was a big deal because you know, you'd be on TV in front of the biggest audiences or at Madison Square Garden to a sold out show. And uh no one benefited more from this relationship than a wrestler named hul Cogan. So Whole Cogan, did you guys know that he started out as a heel, as a bad guy. He's a bad guy. I had

no idea. Well, he finally made the conversion over to a face, and when he did, he became the w ws like biggest star at a time when the w w F By this time they dropped that third w UM was as big as it as it ever was as a matter of fact. So he was huge and he had Andre the Giant to thank for that largely.

And there was this ongoing k fabe fake um rivalry friendship between Andre the Giant and Whole Cooke and they were kind of friend of these on the WWF UM And then WrestleMania two came, I think in X and Andre the Giant one a twenty man battle roy how and he said, you know what, that's it. I'm good. I'm gonna go into summer retirement. I'm not going to officially retire, but my body's breaking down from acromegaly. I drink fifty two beers a day on an average day.

I think I'm good. I'm gonna just gonna go off and rest a little bit, and rather than wrestle, I'm gonna focus on a little film. I just got hired to to be an actor and called The Princess Bride. I saw people pre happening when you said a little film. This lady on the front row he said it, so, uh yeah. Fans of that movie anyone, clearly, I've never I've never met anyone that was like, yeah, it sucked right, totally fake. You know the A few weeks ago they

announced they were remaking it. People are going, yeah, right, people are going nuts, and then other people are like, who cares, It doesn't take away from the original. People are arguing on the internet if you believe that this is no normally I do see. I am kind of like, it doesn't do anything to detract from the originals. We don't go see it. This one violates the laws of

the universe. Remaking The Princess Pride, this one matters. Let's get down the street, because you know that Physic is going to be like the Rock or somebody, and I like the Rock. He's fine, he'll try a little too hard. He couldn't be physic. Now I'm worried the rock is going to be pheasant? Who else? I'm not going to sleep tonight. There's a fruit fly gene. Did you know this? That's called the physic gene because if you remove it, it produces fruit flies of unusual size. That's right, that's

not a joke. The last part was a joke. It wasn't really a joke. It was a little one yap on the end of it. I wish I was not here. This part was supposed to be funny. The middle part it's sort of be a little sad and then be funny again at the end. We can cut all that out, yeah we will. Can't cut reality out right now that they love you, this is your second home. See just say another insider joke about the billboard guy or whatever if you feel like you're losing him. And yeah, we

know enough to stay away from Dayton to beach. Right, Oh that's great. Don't even know where I am now. Princess Pride. That's where we are. So Rob Brianner hired him on the advice of the writer of the book and he said, there's this guy you should hire, Andre the Giant. Rob Brianner had never heard of him. Um, he's like more famous in Muhammad Ali. But Rob Brier like, I don't know where he was at the time. He was on drugs. It's not true, it could be true.

So he was on all of the family, that's what he was doing. So he didn't know who Andre the Giant was. They sent him into audition and he couldn't understand what he was saying. And he was like, what am I supposed to do here? And they said, just hire Andre the Giants. Trust me. He fits the part and he's one of the biggest stars in the world. And he went okay, and that's it was kind of that easy. He said, we needed a giant. This guy was a giant. I just hired the giant. So Andre

did not stop drinking during the film shoot. He continued on his normal ways. And there were three gentlemen named Chris so Randon, Kelly, carry Elise or Elvis apparently Sow. He really pronounced it really Yeah, I've been saying Elise my whole life. Yeah, I've been saying Elvis, not Elvis. He's riding the King's coat tails and and uh man deep a tankin all thought that they could hang with Andre the Giant at the bars. They were dead wrong

and they could not. So many many days on set there are reports of those three guys, Andre showing up being like, let's go, let's do this, and those three kind of dragging their heels. It's probably the nicest say it. He also when he checked out of his room at the London Hyatt after the end of his shoot, um, he had a forty thousand dollar bar tap to pay to settle up, which means that he drank nearly all the contents of the mini bar in his room. Little

hotel him. Yeah. See, so that began as a fact, and then I added a joke at the end. Oh man, it's so much more fun than in the studio. So I mean, no offense, we have a good time. I didn't take offensive, Okay, I didn't even cross my mind. I didn't want to make it sound like we know have fun in the studio, but when you add eight people, it's always more fun. I'm there. I know, we have firing. It's like Bud Bud break up in here. Where's a lot of snapping in the studio. We have a good time,

a lot of mist uh. So Andre was really very sweet through this whole production and very nervous about his performance. He really really wanted to do a good job because he was on a movie set and it was a big movie and it was a really big deal to him, and he was very nervous. Um when he went to Toronto, I can say Toronto here, it's Toronto. Apparently just in Toronto. Yeah,

everywhere else is Toronto. Uh in Toronto. At the premiere in ven his friend Tim White said he was actually shaking nervous during the premiere of the movie because he wasn't sure how the other actors were going to accept him. Um. Afterward, when they cheered and patted him on the back and everything, he was the happiest guy in the world, and so was I for him, It's very sweet. Yeah, it was

a good friend huh Um. He loved his character so much he would carry a VHS copy of The Prince's Bride around with him, not like in his bag or in his hotel and him like around with him all right, he would say, look right, it's probably the scale. Actually. If anyone remembers VHS page, Um well you got me with that, um man just threw me off. Oh oh oh.

So when he was on tour, well, like wrestling, afterward he would he would invite like fellow wrestlers up there, his friends with to like hang out in his room. And while he was there, he'd be like, Hey, here's the here's the room service man. You want to order anything you want to eat or drink, and he'd wait till it arrived, and then whoever was there would start eating and drinking and he'd be like, hey, you want to watch the Princess Brian now that I have you trap, yeah,

And apparently so. Landi Pafo is um Randy Savage's brother and um and Andre was good friends with Landy Pafo. He did. Randy loved Landy. He did this to Lanny six times on one tour. By the end of the tour, Landy was like dodging and like hiding behind plants when he saw Andre because he didn't want to get invited up to watch the Princess Bridy. I can't believe he kept falling for it. Like after four times he was like, all right, I'll order the steak, but we're not going

to watch the movie. Right, No, no, no, here, have dessert. Have dessert? All right? But he said, he said, Andre would point at the TV like when his part was coming up, and then when his part came, and when he'd laugh and clap and ask how he did every time, like he loved that movie and he loved that he he had had a part in it. Love it. Uh So during the shoot, his body was breaking down pretty bad. Though.

There was that one scene where he has to catch Robin Wright who jumps into his arms, and Rob Renner, when he hired him, thought like, this is great. We have this this athlete and this wrestler and we won't have to hire a stunt person and he can do all this stuff. It turns out he couldn't do any of it because because of his back, and they had to lower Robin right down, who weighed like a hundred pounds on cables that they didn't had to greek out

industry term. Did you do that? It was pretty impressive and uh yeah, so it was. It was a big deal. His body was breaking down. He was in really bad shape. He kind of soldier through because it was important to him, but he found himself at the end of Princess Pride and pretty rough shape physically. He did. He also found himself being visited in a surprise visit by Vince mcmon Jr. Who would by then dropped the W from WWWF just made it w w F and had overseen like its

meteoric rise. Uh. And he showed up in England trying to convince Andre the Giant to come back to wrestling, and Andre was like, no, no, I really shouldn't do this, Probably the worst thing I could do. My body's breaking down. I'm in bad shape, can't even hold hundred pound Robin Wright pen um it's it's it's terrible. That was paraphrasing him.

Um and Vince McMahon wouldn't take no for an answer and finally managed to break down his resistance and talked him into getting back surgery and arranged for it in England. And that is I said before um Under the Giant didn't even like to go to the doctor's office, wouldn't take pills, wouldn't take medications, didn't even take a list of drugs in the eighties in wrestling, like he just all he did was dream that was his medication drinking. UM. So the fact that he agreed to undergo back surgery,

it's pretty baffling, but he did. He underwent back surgery, like I said, in England, And there's some urban legends about the surgery, like that they had to use oversized um surgical tools meant for a large animal veterinarian may or may not be true, but that the anesthesiologists UM

had to guess at how much anesthesia to use. I'm sure that's super correct, but he did it based on UM how much alcohol Andre the giant drank, Like how much does it take for him to fall up out in the lobby of a hotel exactly what they call a piano cover night? How much is that? So? Uh, it depends on here talking to UM to see how this is viewed. Vince McMahon and big wrestling fans UM think they did him a big favor by revitalizing his

career and bringing back in the spotlight. UM. Other people like us who are a little more contrarian to that point of view, say, no, you took advantage of this guy. Is obviously breaking down, um, just to sell more tickets and to exploit him, uh kind of till the end of his life, and then kicking him out into the cold when you're done with them, which some people say, booms McMahon, boooo, there you go. So now we can't

wait too what we have to take another message. Just realized sorry, the spirit of the lizard on the toilet just spoke to me said, Josh, don't blow it. This is a really good one. You may release it. You gotta get a second one in there. So everybody, don't pee on me, if you'll, if you'll bear with us, yeah, really it's a pretty dangerous spot. Um, if you'll bear with us, we will be right back. All right, We're

back again everyone. You guys like that every time, huh to uh to recap where we left Andre the giant body breaking down, Vince McMahon brings him back. And now we stumble upon a little event called WrestleMania three, which if you're a wrestling fan, it's this legendary event. It was held in Detroit at the Pontiac Silver Dome. They had plenty of smoke, trust me. Nine people at the Pontiac Silver Dome in Michigan, and it was one of the biggest sporting events sort of in history up to

that point. And for this match, which whole Cogan wrote, and when Lee Majors heard that, he's like wait what he uh? Huld Cogan wrote the match, but Andre the Giant was was toying with him for weeks leading up to it because in the match, whole Cogan becomes like the champ of the WWF and it's a big deal. But um, when he would say like, hey, Andrea, if you have you seen the script, are you good with it?

Andrea would just say something like yeah, yeah, don't worry about it, we'll work it out in the ring or whatever, and would not tell Hulk like, yes, you're going to win, We'll go along with your script. And in fact, whole Cogan didn't know he was going to win until the very end of this match, when Andre the Giant calls

for a body slam and a leg drop. And apparently when whole Cogan body slammed Andre the Giant, he pulled a bicep and a quadricep trying to pick him up, and Andre the Giant was even like pressing off of him to help him and the whole Cogan still injured himself, which you're gonna do when you pick up Andre the Giant's just part and parcel with it. But he did win and the crowd went nuts. That's right after wrestleman A three. He continued wrestling because the w WF sort

of kicked him to the curve. It was very sad, so he went back to where he started. He went to Japan and to mex Ago and wrestled on those circuits for a little while. Um he fought his last match in Japan just one month before he died, and by that time he had wrestled more than five thousand matches in his career. Times it's crazy. So towards the end, um he was like, nobody kicks Andre the Giant of the Curb. I'm going to wrestle on my own terms. And he started touring all over the place and he

became a little more of like a booster. So he was like big time into tag team matches by them, because well, one he could walk out to the ring um with his arms flung over his tag team partner, which you know, people in the crowd was like, oh that's great, they're like total teammates. But really Andre was using the guy as a cane. And then also he could just kind of stand in the corner and like play up the drama but not actually wrestle. And the fans,

though they were they were just happy he was there. Yeah, they didn't care. Just having him in the building was enough. It was really really pretty cool. So here we are at the end. Very sadly. Andre's father, Boris, was approaching death in January of the age of eighty seven, and Andre went to see him in France before he died. He stayed there for his father's funeral and then he would die two weeks after that in France. So on the last day on Earth for Andre the Giant, he

did what he loved more than anything else. He hung out with his oldest friends from his childhood in France, his family there, played tons of cribbage and drank lots and lots of really good French wine, farted on everybody, and he got dropped off at a hotel in Paris that he was staying at and he went up the stairs and that was the last time anyone saw him alive. The next morning, when he was supposed to be picked up.

They went up to his room and knocked when he didn't appear, and finally opened up the door and found Andre the Giant dead in bed. He had died in the night of heart failure. Because the thing with a chromegley is um most of your body grows and grows and grows, but the heart doesn't, and the heart gets taxed over over, you know, forty six years in the case of Andre the Giant, until it just can't beat any longer. And so that's what happened Andre the Giant.

His heart just gave out. Uh So there wasn't a crematorium in France that could handle his body. So they flew him back to North Carolina and a giant custom built coffin and apparently did the WWF steal the coffin, that's the word you could use. Yeah, after they flew him back. Yeah. Yeah, They didn't like like roll his body out mid flight or something. They just basically went

until he was to fly him back. No no, no, no, okay, They flew Hi back and then stall it, yes, to like basically take the headquarters for to put on display. You see, okay, you see, Chuck, you see, we're working it out. Mid show. So the w w E at this point established its Hall of Fame, and Andre the Giant was the very first and only inductee in that

inaugural class. And every year now the w w E still holds a Battle Royal all Uh named after Andre the Giant in his honor, which is, if you stop him, think about it, the pinnacle of human existence to have a Battle Royale held in your name every year, like each one of us in this room should aspire to that in this Okay, let's make a pact right now, everybody,

we can do it. So um. I mentioned his daughter Robin earlier and the fact that they weren't close, and this is sort of one of the sad parts of the of his life was that, you know, when you're wrestling five thousand times in a career, in three thirty nights a year, you're not like anyone in the entertainment business who tours and travels a lot. You're not gonna be around your family much. So he had a daughter that he did not get to see that much. Um he had an ex wife that he did not get

along with at all, which didn't help matters. I don't think they were ever actually married an okay, so an X that didn't get along with so they weren't not like working it out so we could see Robin Um.

There was one time where he tried to have her flown to North Carolina and she was sort of scared to fly, so he sent his good friend Jackie to go collect her and meet her at the airport, and at the last second she kind of backed out, yeah, because she was like, I'm going to hang out with my dad who have met twice, and my mom's not allowed to come, and I'm nine years old. I'm a

little freaked out. So that trip didn't work out. They did keep in touch, mostly over the phone, but like whenever he came through town for wrestling, like she would come and hang out with the backstage and Jackie McAuley Um, one of his two closest friends, later said that no matter what it looked like from the outside, Andre really

really loved his daughter. And when he died, he left a sum to Jackie, a sum to his other best friend, Frenchie, and then the rest was left to Robin Yeah, including the rights to his likeness and image, which I think we all know is where the real money sat, right that's the sweetest plow. So I think she was trying to do a documentary or something about him for a while, with the very least interviewing like old friends of his, so she could learn more about him. Right, very sweet.

So he had a quote towards the end of his life I'm sorry at the height of his career, where he said I've had good fortune and I'm grateful for my life. If I were to die tomorrow, I know I've eaten more good food, drunk more beer and fine wine, and had more friends and seeing more of the world than most men ever will. I've had everything in life but a family, and I hope to have that one day. For now, I know a family wouldn't work because of my traveling, but one day, who knows, I might myself

have a giant for grandson, and that is under the giant. Everybody, all right, kind, thank you, everybody, thank you, thank you. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radios. How stuff works for more podcasts for my Heart Radio is at the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listened to your faith. It shaps