Speaker 1: Hey, Seattle, will see you Thursday, January sixteenth at the
Speaker 1: More Theater in San Francisco. We're going to be at
Speaker 1: the Castro on January when else? Chuck? Uh? That is it? Man?
Speaker 1: January eighteenth at the Castro, our annual trip to Sketch Fest.
Speaker 1: We love performing there. We have great crowds there. Go
Speaker 1: get a ticket. If you want to come see me
Speaker 1: at Movie Crush the next night on Sunday and a
Speaker 1: small venue where you can shake my hand and hug
Speaker 1: my neck. I would welcome that as well. Well, that's
Speaker 1: what I was setting you up for when I said
Speaker 1: what else. I appreciate that. We'll see you guys. You
Speaker 1: can get all the info and tickets you need on
Speaker 1: s Y s K Live dot com or s F
Speaker 1: sketch Fest dot com. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, There's Charles
Speaker 1: w Chuck, Brian Jerry's not here, but all of these beautiful,
Speaker 1: wonderful people are at Plaza Live in Orlando, Florida, our
Speaker 1: Cineo Hall. Stuff going on back there. Yeah, like Florida.
Speaker 1: Um yeah, woo indeed, thank you for that. Toto is
Speaker 1: playing here next week. I could relive my childhood. Yeah,
Speaker 1: quke on the sand, people pulling up their shoes. For
Speaker 1: those of you at home, you'll just never Jerry just
Speaker 1: got all that out. So before we get started, Actually,
Speaker 1: if you guys will indulge me, I would like to
Speaker 1: dedicate this show, uh to a very special woman named
Speaker 1: Alice Harrison, who also happens to have been Jumie's grandma.
Speaker 1: And she passed on Monday, so she is actually a
Speaker 1: fellow Floridian. She lived outside of Tampa for most of
Speaker 1: her life. Um had like parrots and peacocks, like super Florida, right,
Speaker 1: and she was just a very wonderful woman. So I
Speaker 1: want to dedicate this show to Alice Harrison in her memory.
Speaker 1: Everyone very nice, thanks great, thanks for that. And EM's
Speaker 1: here and she's very proud of you right now, yeah
Speaker 1: you um so uh. We didn't really just bring you
Speaker 1: here to talk about's grandma exclusively. We asked you all
Speaker 1: here tonight to talk to you about legends, and in
Speaker 1: particular one legend. No oh man, the crowd showder is
Speaker 1: rarely funny, well done. This legend was something drunk right,
Speaker 1: already deep in this early in the show. Not that's
Speaker 1: the last one you get though, so uh, this legend
Speaker 1: was even better than Zelda. This legend's name was Andre Giant.
Speaker 1: And by the way, if you're not a fan, I
Speaker 1: know this is Florida, But if you're not a fan
Speaker 1: of wrestling, they're like, what are you? What are you
Speaker 1: talking about? Fear not, I'm not a fan of wrestling.
Speaker 1: You're not a real fan of wrestling. This is interesting stuff.
Speaker 1: We wouldn't bring you something so niche that only wrestling
Speaker 1: fans would enjoy. Trust us. In fact, you can make
Speaker 1: the case that if you are a wrestling fan you
Speaker 1: might not like this. Just excuse yourself. So to start
Speaker 1: at the beginning, Andre the Giant was not born under
Speaker 1: the Giant. He was born Andre renee rusom Off May
Speaker 1: in Columier, France, which is a town that is close
Speaker 1: to where he was raised in a French farming town
Speaker 1: called Mullan. I'm sorry, I don't have peanut butter in
Speaker 1: my mouth and um in Mullion. He was raised by
Speaker 1: his parents, Boris and Maryanne ruce him Off, who were
Speaker 1: of Bulgarian Polish descent, respectively, and he was the third
Speaker 1: of five siblings, and he was born at eleven pounds,
Speaker 1: which were told is kind of big. I heard a
Speaker 1: couple of women gasps. Someone sucked airs through their teeth. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Boris Russomof, I'm surprised he's Bulgarian with that name. Terry
Speaker 1: cut that one. You can't just cut everything, sure, we can.
Speaker 1: You gotta put yourself out there, live on the edge
Speaker 1: like that. Boris Russomof's Bulgarian. Who would have thunk it? There?
Speaker 1: You go? Alright? Who would have cut that one too?
Speaker 1: So they were a family of farmers, and he worked
Speaker 1: on the family farm, as did all the kids. I
Speaker 1: think he was the third of five children. And here's
Speaker 1: one thing that may or may not be true, but
Speaker 1: an interesting little tidbit will throw out. Supposedly, when he
Speaker 1: was in school along with the other children, uh there
Speaker 1: in rural France, they would occasionally get rides in the
Speaker 1: pickup truck to school from playwright Samuel Beckett. Yeah right,
Speaker 1: that's the appropriate response to that, like a little surprise,
Speaker 1: but not like totally blown away. But little Andre it
Speaker 1: was never little because he was eleven pounds at birth.
Speaker 1: He began to grow very early. All of his siblings
Speaker 1: and even his parents. We're all just sort of average size,
Speaker 1: so no one knew what was coming when a little Andre,
Speaker 1: by the age of twelve, was six ft tall and
Speaker 1: wade two and forty pounds. And so his parents, being farmers,
Speaker 1: were like, yes, yes, we have an ox yeah for
Speaker 1: our third child. And uh, they were pretty happy about this.
Speaker 1: And Andre said, don't get too comfortable, because in two
Speaker 1: years I'm gonna quit school in eighth grade and go
Speaker 1: find my fortunes in Paris. And he did. And it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where when you're researching and telling
Speaker 1: people that he went to Paris to find his fortunes
Speaker 1: after dropping on the eighth grade, if you stop and
Speaker 1: think about it, imagine getting your fourteen year old son
Speaker 1: moved to Paris by himself to go find his fortune.
Speaker 1: It's a different time. Those are cool parents, very cool parents.
Speaker 1: So maybe they just didn't miss him. They had four
Speaker 1: others wandering around. No, but I'm sure that they tried
Speaker 1: to talk him out, but they're like, he swing a
Speaker 1: scythe like no one I've ever seen who's gonna pull
Speaker 1: the cart right. So he did. He actually started to
Speaker 1: find his fortune is not the best fortune but he
Speaker 1: found some he started moving furniture. Figure he just kind
Speaker 1: of threw uh, he just kind of threw couches through
Speaker 1: the doorways upstairs, that kind of stuff. Sure. Um. And
Speaker 1: then later he became a professional rugby player. Um, which
Speaker 1: is okay, it's getting closer and closer. But rugby actually
Speaker 1: led him inadvertently and accidentally into the world of wrestling.
Speaker 1: That's right, because he trained at a gym as a
Speaker 1: rugby player along with some other wrestlers. There were wrestlers
Speaker 1: that trained there with him, and one day one of
Speaker 1: the wrestlers got hurt. They looked around the gym and
Speaker 1: they said, hey, huge human, come over here, forget rugby.
Speaker 1: You should wrestle with us. Because it was France, and
Speaker 1: they say wrestle uh, And he did and he really
Speaker 1: took to it, and before you know it, he was
Speaker 1: touring as a pro wrestler in Japan, Africa, and New Zealand,
Speaker 1: and in Japan in particular, he had this persona named
Speaker 1: um was it Monster rusom Off. Well he had a
Speaker 1: few names, right, yeah, um he Well, he wrestled under
Speaker 1: the Butcher was one, yeah, Andre the Butcher rusom Off.
Speaker 1: So so one was the French giant, which is way
Speaker 1: too on the nose. It's just like the American podcaster
Speaker 1: if I were a wrestler or something like that, you know,
Speaker 1: And then another can you imagine I would get my
Speaker 1: ass kicked every match, not if you were right in
Speaker 1: the match. By the way, everybody, Oh yeah, well, I
Speaker 1: guess we should just cut to the chase wrestling is
Speaker 1: fake end of the podcast. Um, And then the other one, Chuck.
Speaker 1: What was the third one? Well, the third one, I
Speaker 1: think we can all agree is the best, maybe best
Speaker 1: wrestling name of all time. Monster Eiffel Tower. You imagine,
Speaker 1: like what does it do? Is like the the second
Speaker 1: the gap between the second and third stories, like the
Speaker 1: mouth they eat there's it bends over and like like
Speaker 1: jabs you or something. It just doesn't make any sense
Speaker 1: if you really think about it. It's pretty good. Though
Speaker 1: they ate it up in Japan. Though they did so
Speaker 1: in JAPANI had a different name, Monster russom Off, and
Speaker 1: Monster russomo Off was what in wrestling parlance is called
Speaker 1: a heel a bad guy, right, And in Japan, Andre
Speaker 1: really ate that up, like in the ring and outside
Speaker 1: of the ring. Um, at matches, he would he would
Speaker 1: taunt the fans on the streets. So he's a big
Speaker 1: celebrity on the street. Um, if somebody took a picture
Speaker 1: of him, he chased him down and break their camera.
Speaker 1: He loved being a heel right, all in good fun, right,
Speaker 1: Tell that to the Japanese guy who had to go
Speaker 1: buy another key because monster russom Off broke the other
Speaker 1: one and none of his friends would believe him. So
Speaker 1: he eventually went to Europe to wrestle, and there he
Speaker 1: wrestled under the name Jean Fare, which is a play
Speaker 1: on the term or the name Grand Fair, who was
Speaker 1: a hero in French folklore who would kill English invaders? Uh?
Speaker 1: Or colonial? I can never say that word colonially and
Speaker 1: the colonists you're adding like five or six extra sill colonialists. Colonists.
Speaker 1: No colonialists, No, that's just wrong. Who says colonialism colonialism?
Speaker 1: They're colonialists, right, No colonial like a bird colonists, guys,
Speaker 1: colonists right, Okay, I'm not losing my mind. Colonialists right here,
Speaker 1: that's where it is a melting COI This usually didn't
Speaker 1: happen so later in the show. Someone snorting makes you
Speaker 1: feel a lot better. So regardless of what they called
Speaker 1: the English invaders colonists in folklore, Grand Fair would kill
Speaker 1: them with an axe. And he was this big French
Speaker 1: hero in the storybooks. And so Jean Fair was a
Speaker 1: play on that name, right, And so when he became Genfair,
Speaker 1: he became a hero in the wrestling world. Or what's
Speaker 1: known is a baby face or a face. You got
Speaker 1: heels and faces. Everyone in this room doesn't know that already, right.
Speaker 1: So as gen Fair, he became pretty big around Europe,
Speaker 1: so much so that there's a legend that he told
Speaker 1: himself once in an interview we read where he went
Speaker 1: back home. Uh, like aged nineteen, I think so, I've
Speaker 1: been about five years since he left home. He went
Speaker 1: back home after he'd made it. He shows up in
Speaker 1: a rolls Royce, goes up to the door and knocks
Speaker 1: on it and says, hey, how are you doing? Mom
Speaker 1: and dad? And they didn't recognize him at first, but
Speaker 1: they did recognize gen Fair, their favorite wrestler who had
Speaker 1: just shown up on their doorstep and said, I'm your son.
Speaker 1: They've been watching him all this time, and Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant had changed so much they didn't recognize them. They
Speaker 1: just became fans of gen Fair. I really want to
Speaker 1: believe that. I do too. Even if it's b S,
Speaker 1: it's still a pretty great story. But it'd be like
Speaker 1: if if like um Stone called Steve Austin showed up
Speaker 1: on your doorst was like, I'm your son. It's basically
Speaker 1: the same, the same thing. It's just a different person.
Speaker 1: That's right. He's really trying to keep it together here, everybody, Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is good. Florida's forgiving God. This didn't happen in Maine.
Speaker 1: We have to cut that part out. Those manners have
Speaker 1: come for us. I've seen that last some more people
Speaker 1: asleep in the audience in Maine. We've seen that before.
Speaker 1: Very disconcerting. Just so you know, if you're in the
Speaker 1: first five rows, please just stay awake. I'm used to it.
Speaker 1: If you don't even have to laugh, just stay awake.
Speaker 1: That's your job tonight. Did you see your partners start
Speaker 1: to fall asleep? Just give him one of those. It's
Speaker 1: very disconcerting. Basically, we're watching you. So around nineteen seventy,
Speaker 1: Andrea was working with a man named Eduard Carpentier, the
Speaker 1: Flying Frenchman, and he was a wrestler, believe it or not,
Speaker 1: turned promoter, and he claimed and that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of tall tales in this story and we're not
Speaker 1: sure which ones are true. But he claimed that he
Speaker 1: met Andre when he was driving down the road in
Speaker 1: France and there was a redwood tree that had fallen,
Speaker 1: and Andrea emerged and moved the tree. I think that
Speaker 1: one might not be true. Sounds pretty good though. That's
Speaker 1: a good story, but that's not true. But he figures
Speaker 1: in very important to Andre's life because he took him
Speaker 1: to Quebec to wrestle le gen Fair and made a
Speaker 1: very important introduction to a man named Vince McMahon sr.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, okay, okay, So Vince McMahon senior for those
Speaker 1: of you, the five of you who don't know who
Speaker 1: he is. He was a big time wrestling promoter at
Speaker 1: a time when wrestling in America was regional, right, It
Speaker 1: was not a nationwide thing. It was the country was
Speaker 1: cut up into different regions. And Vince McMahon was the
Speaker 1: head of the Worldwide Wrestling Federation, the w w w F.
Speaker 1: Because apparently Vince McMahon didn't know that worldwide is one
Speaker 1: word serious, they put it on marketing materials and everything.
Speaker 1: He would go on to shorten that later yeah, later on,
Speaker 1: his son would correct the massive spelling error that his
Speaker 1: father had started years before. But before that, Mr mcman
Speaker 1: had this really great idea. He said, you Joan Fair,
Speaker 1: We're going to change that name in a minute. You
Speaker 1: are really something special. Rather than put you on one
Speaker 1: circuit or one town or whatever, just sticking to one
Speaker 1: region where you're gonna, you know, be huge at first
Speaker 1: and then just kind of become whatever, just a so
Speaker 1: so guy. I'm gonna take you from region to region
Speaker 1: around the country and promote you. And he did, and
Speaker 1: in doing so, Andre the Giant became one of the
Speaker 1: nation's first wrestling stars because he went from town to
Speaker 1: town and it was a big deal when he came
Speaker 1: to town. Every time it was a really big deal.
Speaker 1: They would start promoting the storylines ahead of time, because,
Speaker 1: as we said, wrestling is fake. So they would drove
Speaker 1: up these stories about this giant that would come to town.
Speaker 1: And because all the heels were getting out of hand
Speaker 1: in Memphis or in Jacksonville or wherever, and so they
Speaker 1: would bring in Andre to get them all in line.
Speaker 1: And the big Giant's gonna come into town. He's a
Speaker 1: good guy, and he's huge and no one's ever seen
Speaker 1: anything like him, and that really got people in the
Speaker 1: seats and really dig way like the promoters would charge
Speaker 1: more than than was normal because they knew that people
Speaker 1: who are going to pay it to come to Andrea
Speaker 1: set the universe right again. Right um. In America, he
Speaker 1: finally got the name Andre the Giant. I believe it
Speaker 1: was Vince McMahon sor who gave who gave him that name.
Speaker 1: And he debuted in nineteen seventy three at Madison Square
Speaker 1: Gardens as Andrea the Giant, and he was builed as
Speaker 1: the eighth Wonder of the World. At seven ft four
Speaker 1: in is five hundred and twenty pounds, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: He wrestled I think between four fifty and five twenty
Speaker 1: for most of his career except at the end and
Speaker 1: WrestleMania three. There are reports that he weighed as much
Speaker 1: as six fifty lot and you could tell he was
Speaker 1: not in the best of shape at that point. Well
Speaker 1: he was six fifty. Yeah, this story will we'll get
Speaker 1: sad at some point, so just get ready his time. Sorry,
Speaker 1: his height, his height is in dispute. Basically, there are
Speaker 1: people who have dedicated entire websites to trying to prove
Speaker 1: that Andre the Giant was seven ft four inches, but
Speaker 1: most credible sources say, nice about six ft seven inches. Um.
Speaker 1: Some people say maybe he was towards the end of
Speaker 1: his career, but he underwent back surgery six and they
Speaker 1: removed some vertebrae there, so he was seven ft four
Speaker 1: inches and they shrunk him down to six ft seven inches.
Speaker 1: And most people say, you live in your mom's basement,
Speaker 1: don't you, And that ends the argument every single time.
Speaker 1: I'm not a back surgeon. I don't think that's how
Speaker 1: that works. I don't think it's that one vertebrae out, dude,
Speaker 1: let's get another one out. The good news is your
Speaker 1: back one hurt, but you're eight inches shorter, right, I
Speaker 1: don't think that's how it works. So, uh, he was
Speaker 1: truly enormous, though there are other great stories. One is
Speaker 1: that his wrists were nearly a foot in diameter. Right. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we're like so everybody, that's just plainly obvious, an enormous wrist.
Speaker 1: But we had no frame of reference except for my
Speaker 1: tiny wrist, right, which we know is not a foot
Speaker 1: mine's not either. Um, So we went to the slender
Speaker 1: wrist dot com and that is a real website. We said,
Speaker 1: what is the average human man's wrists circumference? And we
Speaker 1: found out it's seven inches seven point four inches, So
Speaker 1: his is about five inches bigger around than the average
Speaker 1: man's wrist, which is huge, which I guess we should
Speaker 1: have just stuck to a foot in circumfort. You know,
Speaker 1: I shouldn't have explained that into the ground. Well, I
Speaker 1: just like knowing there's a website called the Slender Wrist
Speaker 1: dot com, and then I'm not on it. So he
Speaker 1: wore a size twenty six wrestling boot just for comparison.
Speaker 1: Shaquille O'Neil was very large man started out his career
Speaker 1: playing for a little team called the Orlando Magic. He
Speaker 1: wears a twenty two andre were six so uh what else?
Speaker 1: There were other legends he could pass a silver dollar
Speaker 1: coin through his rings. Uh. And then another one that
Speaker 1: I don't think it's true that he had two hearts
Speaker 1: and multiple rows of teeth like a monster. And apparently
Speaker 1: Rick Flair, the nature boy, Um, we're in the right place.
Speaker 1: He he believed both of those, the heart one and
Speaker 1: the teeth one, and whenever he was talking to the giant,
Speaker 1: he said that he was like kind of trying to
Speaker 1: look into his mouth while he was talking. We've met
Speaker 1: Rick Flair. He totally believed that, Yeah, we can attend.
Speaker 1: He for some reason was a guest star on our
Speaker 1: TV show that we had. Maybe that was one reason
Speaker 1: why it wasn't so great, you know, I think he
Speaker 1: was the reason it wasn't totally terribly. It was a
Speaker 1: good little guest appearance. We found out the day of
Speaker 1: that he was coming to shoot. That's right, it's a
Speaker 1: weird day. So he was ridiculously strong though. He would
Speaker 1: do with this little party trick where when his friends
Speaker 1: were in a bar, he would move their cars. It's
Speaker 1: a little small European cars, like not with the keys right,
Speaker 1: he would pick it up and move it. He also
Speaker 1: there's footage of him lifting a two thousand pound weight. Like,
Speaker 1: you try to lift two thousand pounds, you can't do it.
Speaker 1: Has anyone ever tried to lift two thousand pounds? I'm
Speaker 1: not trying, well, believe me, you can't do it. And
Speaker 1: he tried to lift twenty pounds. He's there picking picking
Speaker 1: up a two thousand I mean, I presume it was
Speaker 1: a two thousand pound weight. It was a weight that
Speaker 1: said two thousand pounds on it. What way eight lines,
Speaker 1: you know, and it wasn't a cartoon. The thing. The
Speaker 1: thing is he um he was feared because of his
Speaker 1: strength by other wrestlers, not because he was known to
Speaker 1: be like a malicious, brutal guy, but because just one
Speaker 1: slip in wrestling you could he could really injure somebody.
Speaker 1: But he almost never did because he had he was
Speaker 1: a genuinely good wrestler. That's one of the things about
Speaker 1: Andre the Giant. Confetti. There's confetti, there's been the steady
Speaker 1: stream of confetti fallen the whole thing. The flaming lips
Speaker 1: might have played here like night. So Under the Giant
Speaker 1: was a legitimately good wrestler. Yeah, into that paragraph. So
Speaker 1: his his English was never great, you know. He was
Speaker 1: born and raised in France and could speak English, but
Speaker 1: not not the greatest. And he also just put a
Speaker 1: pin in this. He had a medical condition that we're
Speaker 1: going to get back to you later. But because of
Speaker 1: that condition as well, enunciating was a little difficult for him.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people thought that he was just
Speaker 1: this big dummy, this big brute, and that was not
Speaker 1: true at all. He was a very smart guy. Very
Speaker 1: savvy businessman, a great showman, very observant, and very shrewd.
Speaker 1: He was not just some big oath in a singlet right, No,
Speaker 1: he wasn't. Um to help him though with that language
Speaker 1: barrier when he moved from Quebec down in North America
Speaker 1: or down in the United States, I guess technically Quebec
Speaker 1: is in North America. Technically Um. He hired a guy
Speaker 1: named Frank Valois, and Frank val Wall was a referee
Speaker 1: on the Quebec circuit who served as his interpreter um
Speaker 1: and he hung out with him for a few years,
Speaker 1: and then he just became like a friend of his
Speaker 1: rather than somebody worked with And that was kind of
Speaker 1: par for the course with Andre the Giant. Compared to
Speaker 1: other sports stars, he had a very small, if non
Speaker 1: existent entourage. He didn't have the hangers on and the
Speaker 1: toady's and the lackeys and the agents and like the
Speaker 1: the drug dealers or whoever else do you have hanging
Speaker 1: around you if you're never took no no um. He
Speaker 1: was a bit of a loner, but the friends he
Speaker 1: had were like true, legitimate friends. So he was kind
Speaker 1: of an anomaly in that sense in the sports world. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and apparently he did have a very pretty strict list,
Speaker 1: and you were either a friend or you're an enemy,
Speaker 1: and once you were on that list, you were kind
Speaker 1: of on it for life. His list of friends was
Speaker 1: very long because he was a good guy and really
Speaker 1: loved people. But he did have a few enemies in
Speaker 1: the in the wrestling world. One was Big John stud
Speaker 1: who was another very large man who wrestled, and he
Speaker 1: allegedly called Andrea's circus freak once once, And as you
Speaker 1: will see as we go on, Andrea was a very
Speaker 1: sensitive guy about his size and he didn't want to
Speaker 1: be called a circus freak. Who does, so it's a
Speaker 1: good point. Um. He also had a thing with the
Speaker 1: iron cheek for reasons that are unclear. Um. He also
Speaker 1: had a very long standing beef with Randy the Macho
Speaker 1: Man Savage. That's right, And this one boils down to
Speaker 1: the fact that Randy like to oil up. He would
Speaker 1: baby oil himself, which was a common thing in wrestling
Speaker 1: because I guess shiny muscles read on camera. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure that's not why I oil up, but
Speaker 1: apparently it looks better on TV. And so Randy would
Speaker 1: oil up in a big way, baby, And people would
Speaker 1: tell Randy like, Andre doesn't like the oil in the
Speaker 1: wrestling match, so like, can you just when you wrestle him,
Speaker 1: can he not oil up? And he said, no, I
Speaker 1: gotta oil up right. As as an aside, by the way,
Speaker 1: everybody is one of the tragic unknown facts of Randy
Speaker 1: the Macho Man Savages life that he was physically incapable
Speaker 1: of snapping into his own slim gym because his fingers
Speaker 1: were so oily. You had to walk around in the
Speaker 1: street begging common strangers to snap into a slim gym
Speaker 1: for him, just denigrating himself. Sad. Apparently, uh that's good.
Speaker 1: Apparently years later, Uh, Andre has has a daughter named Robin,
Speaker 1: and she wasn't super close with her dad, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna get to that a little bit more. It was
Speaker 1: very sad, but she was trying to get information about
Speaker 1: her dad and get stories from wrestler from wrestlers and friends,
Speaker 1: and she went to Randy Savage and he said, I
Speaker 1: wish I could tell you more, but your dad just
Speaker 1: didn't like me. I had nothing but the utmost respect
Speaker 1: for him, but he just didn't like me. And then
Speaker 1: he just slipped and slid down the street and that's
Speaker 1: the last anyone ever saw him. That's great, so um.
Speaker 1: When when Andrea was wrestling one of his enemies, he
Speaker 1: would dole out like a little more punishment than than
Speaker 1: was normal. And one of the punishments he had reserved
Speaker 1: for Macho Man in particular, was he would throw him
Speaker 1: down to the mat, step on his hair, and then
Speaker 1: yank him up and leave like tufts of hair on
Speaker 1: the mat behind him. And he did this for two reasons.
Speaker 1: One clearly, it hurts to have tufts of hair pulled
Speaker 1: out of your head. But also he knew Macho Man
Speaker 1: was very sensitive about losing his hair, so he would
Speaker 1: yank it out by the footfall. Kind of meat that
Speaker 1: size ftfull right exactly, that's a lot of hair. His friends,
Speaker 1: he liked to mess with two because he was a
Speaker 1: very fun guy in the ring and you know, what
Speaker 1: are you gonna do to Andre the giant? Like he
Speaker 1: kind of ran the show when he was in there,
Speaker 1: So he would mess around with his buddies. Hacksaw Jim
Speaker 1: Duggan told a story one time about Andre choking him
Speaker 1: with a strap he had that he was very famous
Speaker 1: for that one single old school wrestling singlet he choked
Speaker 1: him with that strap and then would wring out the
Speaker 1: sweat into his mouth. Oh just wait, are you gonna
Speaker 1: make me say this? That He also would um like
Speaker 1: push his opponent down, sit on them and fart, and
Speaker 1: that sounds pretty bad. But it turns out that in
Speaker 1: Andre the Giant fart lasted apparently no joke for like
Speaker 1: thirty seconds, Like they would cut to commercial break and
Speaker 1: come back and they'd still be farting on this person.
Speaker 1: And somebody just google Andre the Giant fart and they're
Speaker 1: like dozens of stories. Someone I can't remember who who
Speaker 1: said it, but somebody in an interview called it an event.
Speaker 1: I I think, uh, what, this is going pretty well,
Speaker 1: don't you think you guys think it's going all right? Well,
Speaker 1: that means that we might release this, which means then
Speaker 1: that we have to work in a message break. So
Speaker 1: we're gonna do that. If you guys will bear with us,
Speaker 1: we will be right back after these messages. All right,
Speaker 1: We're back, everybody. That's how it working. So I don't
Speaker 1: know if you remember where we left off, but Andre
Speaker 1: the Giant was parting on people and we went to
Speaker 1: commercial break, and he went to commercial break just like
Speaker 1: I said. So what happened uh in his career was
Speaker 1: he got really famous for being what's called the King
Speaker 1: of the Cage match. And if you don't know what
Speaker 1: wrestling is, uh, and cage matches are also called a
Speaker 1: battle royals when they would literally put a cage around
Speaker 1: the ring and they would put twenty dudes in there
Speaker 1: and they would all just fake hit each other until
Speaker 1: no one could fake hit anymore, and then the last
Speaker 1: man standing was the victor. And Andre really dominated these matches.
Speaker 1: He was known as King of the Cage Match, which
Speaker 1: actually that's right, um because it wasn't a joke. That
Speaker 1: was so um. Once he hit the American circuit um,
Speaker 1: his star rose very very quickly. By the mid seventies,
Speaker 1: he was the highest paid wrestler in the world. He
Speaker 1: was listed as such in the Guinness Book of World Records.
Speaker 1: They said that he made a smooth four K that
Speaker 1: year in nineteen seventy four, which is a lot of
Speaker 1: cheese bank cheese. There's a lot of cheese now, but
Speaker 1: it's cute now when you look at athletes are taken
Speaker 1: in But he was one of the highest paid athletes
Speaker 1: period in the world. He was, and he was also
Speaker 1: one of the most famous that There was one profile
Speaker 1: of them in Sports Illustrated that said that, with the
Speaker 1: possible exception of Muhammad Ali, he was the most recognizable
Speaker 1: active figure in sports in the world. That's super famous,
Speaker 1: that's right. And so what are you gonna do when
Speaker 1: you're a super famous wrestler. You're gonna start being on TV.
Speaker 1: And he did this a lot. He would show up
Speaker 1: and if you were around in the seventies and eighties
Speaker 1: and you watched network television, like the rest of his dead,
Speaker 1: you might see him pop up on b J and
Speaker 1: the Bear. Right, people in Maine had no idea what
Speaker 1: b J and the Bear was. Stunned silence. He was
Speaker 1: in a two parter, b J and the Bear. Uh.
Speaker 1: He played Bigfoot a little on the nose in an
Speaker 1: episode of The Six Million Dollar Man, And there was
Speaker 1: this one scene where Lee Major's, a star of Six
Speaker 1: Million Dollar Man, was supposed to get thrown across the
Speaker 1: room by Bigfoot Andre the Giant, and he was a
Speaker 1: little worried that he was going to get hurt, and
Speaker 1: he was very pleased to find out that Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant was, Like we said, a very skilled athlete and
Speaker 1: knew how to do this stuff. But he sold the
Speaker 1: He sold the pounce basically, And if you really stop
Speaker 1: and think about the subtext of that, it strongly suggests
Speaker 1: that Lee Majors thought pro wrestling was real. Yes, it's
Speaker 1: quite possible. I thought he was just gonna injure me.
Speaker 1: I mean he jumped on me. From what else was
Speaker 1: he end? He was in ConA in The Destroyer alongside Schwarzenegger,
Speaker 1: Wilt Chamberlaine, and Grace Jones. Weirdest cast in movie history
Speaker 1: was a weird chance. But it holds up, does it?
Speaker 1: I mean it didn't hold up originally, so it hasn't
Speaker 1: gotten any worse about that. It holds up as well
Speaker 1: as it ever did exactly. He He was on a
Speaker 1: very famous Honeycomb's commercial where he played a giant but
Speaker 1: but wait for it, a medieval giant invading a treehouse
Speaker 1: full of kids because he was hungry for a big
Speaker 1: honey taste. That's my andre. The giant press is good,
Speaker 1: pretty terrible. He did honey Combs, by the way in
Speaker 1: the end. Uh. And there was also a very weird
Speaker 1: time in the eighties where the singer Cindy Lauper somehow
Speaker 1: got involved in pro wrestling and would have She would
Speaker 1: go to events and take part in some events and
Speaker 1: then would have wrestlers being her videos. The eighties were
Speaker 1: weird everybody. It was a very strange time, but it
Speaker 1: just sort of signifies what a big pop culture icon
Speaker 1: Andre the Giant was. He really was. He got the
Speaker 1: big hoist at the end of the Goonies theme video.
Speaker 1: He did, Yeah, that's like, that's the big shot. That's
Speaker 1: the one you want, you know, the hoist hoisting Cyndey Lauper.
Speaker 1: Everybody's gonna pay attention to that one. Uh. He also
Speaker 1: liked the ladies, but by all accounts he was a
Speaker 1: true gentleman. Uh. There's a quote here from one of
Speaker 1: his friends who said, everywhere he goes there are women, women,
Speaker 1: women who range wildly in socio economic level, age, and
Speaker 1: even interest in pro wrestling, and he treats them all
Speaker 1: the same splendid lye Andre simply enjoys the company of women,
Speaker 1: and they enjoy his So he seems like a good dude.
Speaker 1: He was, even by today's standards, so um. As wealthy
Speaker 1: and famous as he was, he had extremely simple tastes
Speaker 1: like don't forget. He was raised a farm boy in
Speaker 1: France and he definitely never lost his roots. So his
Speaker 1: favorite things to do were like hanging out with friends
Speaker 1: unless he wanted to be alone, UM, playing cards and
Speaker 1: specifically Uno and cribbage, where his games big time, so
Speaker 1: so much so fans here, so get this, Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant love cribbs so much that he would be playing
Speaker 1: at backstage constantly and sometimes he would put off going
Speaker 1: out into the ring during a televised match because he
Speaker 1: hadn't finished his cribbage game yet. He had to finish
Speaker 1: that first before he went out there. So he was
Speaker 1: like cribbage for life, c for l scribbage with a
Speaker 1: c okay making sure Whennik had to cut that part out.
Speaker 1: So now we're gonna get to the part where we
Speaker 1: talk about Andre the Giants drinking. Um. If you know
Speaker 1: anything about the guy, if you saw the documentary on HBO, UM,
Speaker 1: you know that he drank a lot, a lot because
Speaker 1: he liked to drink and he was humongous. Put those
Speaker 1: two things together and you get statistics like this. He
Speaker 1: was estimated to have consumed about seven thousand calories of
Speaker 1: alcohol per day. It's right, somebody went bud break Toto,
Speaker 1: I remember you. Uh. An average day or an average
Speaker 1: beer drinking sesh, he would plow down fifty two cans
Speaker 1: of beer this is a normal day, or eleven bottles
Speaker 1: of red wine. One wrestler talked about um one match
Speaker 1: where Andre drank six bottles of wine before he wrestled
Speaker 1: the match, and like, no one could tell, literally nobody
Speaker 1: could tell he was He was famous for drinking planes
Speaker 1: dry of their mini bottles, like just gone, Like sorry, everybody,
Speaker 1: you can't have your bloody Mary because Andre the giants here,
Speaker 1: and he drank all the liquor on the plane. And
Speaker 1: as far as beers go, the most beers he ever
Speaker 1: drank in one sitting, the highest number we've seen is
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty six in one sitting. In some
Speaker 1: people more cautious souls are like, don't be foolish. Of course,
Speaker 1: he didn't drink a hundred beers. You drink somewhere between
Speaker 1: a hundred hundred fifty six is the truth. That's astounding. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he could hold it. But none of this is
Speaker 1: to say that he didn't get drunk, because he he
Speaker 1: would definitely get drunk. You can't drink a hundred nineteen beers.
Speaker 1: Eventually it's going to affect even the largest cow in
Speaker 1: the field. So there were stories of him. Uh. One
Speaker 1: time he and Dusty Rhodes stole horse drawn carriages in
Speaker 1: New York City and rode them around the park. A
Speaker 1: couple of stories about him passing out, like he would
Speaker 1: make it back to the hotel and just flop on
Speaker 1: the floor of the lobby and what do you do,
Speaker 1: bell hop, move this man. Nope. So there are two stories,
Speaker 1: one that they just threw a piano cover over him
Speaker 1: and another one and this is the best, that they
Speaker 1: just made him a feature. They just put put a
Speaker 1: velvet rope around him. It was like the eighth Wonder
Speaker 1: of the World right there. And charges of nickel per
Speaker 1: visit here. M snor smell was part. It's an event. Amazing.
Speaker 1: So um, it wasn't all salad days for Andre the Giant.
Speaker 1: While he was wrestling. When he was in Japan, when
Speaker 1: he was first starting out back in around nineteen UM,
Speaker 1: he made a rare visit to the doctor. He hated
Speaker 1: going to the doctor, hated medicine, hated anything like that. Um,
Speaker 1: But he went to see the doctors in Japan and
Speaker 1: while he was there, they diagnosed him with the condition.
Speaker 1: The condition Chuck was referring to earlier called acromegaly, and
Speaker 1: acromegaly is a pro tuitary gland disorder that causes gigantism.
Speaker 1: So Andre the Giant was by definition a giant. And
Speaker 1: while he was there at the doctor's office, they said, um,
Speaker 1: you know this is actually something we can easily correct.
Speaker 1: We used to to kind of get in there and
Speaker 1: you you have a legion or a tumor on your
Speaker 1: protutory glam. We can treat it and this will cease,
Speaker 1: this will stop. And he said, no, it's okay. And
Speaker 1: they said, well, wait a minute. If you don't do this,
Speaker 1: you're probably not gonna make it past fifty. He said,
Speaker 1: I said that's okay, and he leaves. And twelve years
Speaker 1: later he goes to the hospital again and the doctors
Speaker 1: do the same thing. Different doctors at Duke University. They
Speaker 1: diagnosed him with acromegle and they say, we can treat this,
Speaker 1: and he said, no, I'm all good. He said, if
Speaker 1: this is the size God wanted me to be, then
Speaker 1: this is the size I'm going to remain. Very sweet.
Speaker 1: He uh, he might have thought he would shrink or something,
Speaker 1: because part of it was a business decision. He thought
Speaker 1: he didn't he couldn't lose his wrestling career by having
Speaker 1: a surgery. I don't know if they didn't explain it
Speaker 1: to him well or not, Like maybe he was just
Speaker 1: a little younger, because he was he continued to grow
Speaker 1: into his thirties. He was still growing right, and with
Speaker 1: acromegle in particular, UM, it causes obviously, it's a runaway
Speaker 1: growth hormone that's being produced by your petteritary plan because
Speaker 1: something's leaning on it. And um, from this, you keep
Speaker 1: growing and growing well into your thirties, and your bones
Speaker 1: grow too, and often in like strange ways. So your
Speaker 1: face facial features just change. Um, your bones get way
Speaker 1: denser and bigger than than it would be normal. Um,
Speaker 1: you also have secondary stuff like carpal tunnel and arthritis
Speaker 1: and diabetes and things like this. So, um, it's not
Speaker 1: a good condition to have. And it also can be
Speaker 1: very psychologically damaging too. And you could say that it
Speaker 1: definitely had an impact on the psyche of Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant as well. Yeah, it was very sad he was
Speaker 1: you know, you think about the world that sort of
Speaker 1: made for average sized folks, and you don't think about
Speaker 1: the fact that being seven foot four or seven ft
Speaker 1: tall or six eight in five hundred pounds and what
Speaker 1: that does to your life and just moving around in
Speaker 1: the world, and it was tough on him. He would
Speaker 1: find himself seated like on the floor of a van
Speaker 1: because he couldn't sit in the seat. Um, think about
Speaker 1: when he's flying on a plane. There are pictures of
Speaker 1: him on airplanes where he's occupying three rows of seats,
Speaker 1: which is great because he was rich and famous and
Speaker 1: they could accommodate him. But think about going to the bathroom,
Speaker 1: Like I can barely fit in an airplane bathroom. They're terrible.
Speaker 1: Under the Giant couldn't even think about it. So he
Speaker 1: had to suffer indignities like getting flight attendants to hold
Speaker 1: up curtains so he could urinate in a bucket on
Speaker 1: a flight, like on a long flight if he couldn't
Speaker 1: hold it that long, and everyone on the plane would
Speaker 1: just suddenly talk very loudly about anything but the fact
Speaker 1: that Under the Giant was peeing into an ice bucket
Speaker 1: right over there by the way, Randy the matchaman Stabbors,
Speaker 1: you could pop right into any airplane bathroom. Please right in.
Speaker 1: I slipped right in. Oh man, nice callback. But like
Speaker 1: I said, he did have money and he was famous,
Speaker 1: so they could accommodate him as much as possible. Ben
Speaker 1: So McMahon. But this extra large van that was super
Speaker 1: beefed up and it had the roof popped up in
Speaker 1: an extra large couch inside. I know this is Florida's
Speaker 1: You're all like, so a van, right? He had a
Speaker 1: party van, is what you're saying. Yeah, there's like a
Speaker 1: wizard writing a unicorn peting on the side. You know,
Speaker 1: a van. They're driven by man. But there's one very
Speaker 1: sad quote he had where he said, I would give
Speaker 1: much money to be able to spend one day per
Speaker 1: week as a man of regular size. I would shop,
Speaker 1: I would go to the cinema, and I would drive
Speaker 1: around in a sports car or walk down Fifth Avenue
Speaker 1: and stare at other people for a change. Yeah, oh
Speaker 1: it's right, because here's the thing. He had two choices
Speaker 1: every day, or really one choice. He could either hide
Speaker 1: or go out and endure the spotlight. Because I think
Speaker 1: it was whole. Cogan said, you know, other wrestlers can
Speaker 1: put on it. Dis Guys can go like find a
Speaker 1: dark corner in a bar or restaurant just kind of
Speaker 1: lay low under the giant couldn't do that. Whether he
Speaker 1: was a famous wrestler or not, the world felt entitled
Speaker 1: to gawk at him whenever he was out on the street.
Speaker 1: And because he was famous, that actually didn't help. It
Speaker 1: actually made things worse because when he went to bars,
Speaker 1: um drunks would try to pick fights with them or
Speaker 1: pull knives on him, and he'd have to like break
Speaker 1: their ribs just to get him to go away, which
Speaker 1: he did actually, Um. And then even people who didn't
Speaker 1: pull knives could still get to them, like they would
Speaker 1: just be like, jeez, look at that on that guy.
Speaker 1: He's huge, you know, that kind of stuff as he's
Speaker 1: walking down the street. And he would actually cry and
Speaker 1: private like he was a very sensitive guy and that
Speaker 1: kind of stuff got to him. Terry, we'll retake this
Speaker 1: in the studio. He loved kids, but uh, kids were
Speaker 1: afraid of him, which was very heartbreaking. Um. He was
Speaker 1: very gentle with kids, he said, I try to be
Speaker 1: very soft with children. I don't want them to fear me.
Speaker 1: But often when I go to the homes of people
Speaker 1: who have kids that will run for me, even though
Speaker 1: they've seen me on television. I understand why they do this,
Speaker 1: but it's a sad feeling for me even so. So,
Speaker 1: it's a pretty surprising paradox that somebody who's who's all
Speaker 1: like the sum total of their issues would be found
Speaker 1: in this condition and who had such trouble making it
Speaker 1: through the world would choose pro wrestling as a career
Speaker 1: because he had to travel all the time, Like during
Speaker 1: the seventies, he would wrestle three hundred and thirty to
Speaker 1: three hundred and forty nights a year, almost always in
Speaker 1: a different city every night. Like this is someone who
Speaker 1: really valued a leap year, you know what I mean,
Speaker 1: Like it meant something to him when he got breaks though,
Speaker 1: those rare breaks that he would get, he would go home.
Speaker 1: And his home in the United States ended up being
Speaker 1: in North Carolina in a town called Ellerby, Uh. He
Speaker 1: bought a ranch there in ninety seven, little ranch house
Speaker 1: and acre wasn't over the top. It was very kind
Speaker 1: of a modest home. But he loved the land. He
Speaker 1: had Rottweiler's and he had cattle, and he had horses,
Speaker 1: and he had a Honda a TV that he would
Speaker 1: ride around. Um there was this couple Frenchie and Jackie
Speaker 1: that were his some of his best friends, and they
Speaker 1: kind of took care of the place while he was gone.
Speaker 1: And that was really um, that's really where he went
Speaker 1: to to just be Andre the Giant, where he knew
Speaker 1: that he was among friends and loved ones and wouldn't
Speaker 1: be stared and talked at. He also get this, I
Speaker 1: didn't realize this. You mean told me this today. He
Speaker 1: had a fish camp called Giants Fish Camp in Stepner, Florida,
Speaker 1: near Sara Sota. Has anybody ever heard of it? Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: apparently that was Andre the Giants Fish Camp. And it
Speaker 1: turns out my father in law and he's grandpa, who's
Speaker 1: my father in law's dad, regardless of your grandpa in law. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they would go fishing at this fish camp with Andre
Speaker 1: the Giant. Like my father in law used to go
Speaker 1: fishing with Andre the Giant. And he said, Andrea the
Speaker 1: Giant used to carry this like custom aid at or
Speaker 1: on deck chair with special cushions around in the back
Speaker 1: of his pickup truck because this was like the chair.
Speaker 1: He considered it was his chair. And he would sell
Speaker 1: rings off of his giant fingers that he had autographed
Speaker 1: and apparently he gave one to my father in law. Yes,
Speaker 1: and he doesn't know where it is. Yeah, a man
Speaker 1: is right, we'll find him one day. I just pictured
Speaker 1: him telling you the story over dinner as he takes
Speaker 1: like this napkin ring off and just sets it on
Speaker 1: the table and nobody knows that or a bracelet just
Speaker 1: kind of slyly slides off of his hand. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: thought that was pretty cool. Oh and um, so you
Speaker 1: mean's grandpa and Andre the Giant would speak Polish to
Speaker 1: one another. Yeah, yeah, gets some Polish people in the audience.
Speaker 1: Like all right, I thought you're gonna say it was like,
Speaker 1: you mean's prom choker or something, right, so you know,
Speaker 1: the the classic prom choker from Andre the Giant sweaty fingers.
Speaker 1: So um. He also shopped on QBC a lot on
Speaker 1: another little fact about him, very cute. So by the
Speaker 1: early nineteen eighties, Uh, by this point it was the WWF.
Speaker 1: It was um a really really big spectacle in the US,
Speaker 1: and they had Andre the Giant to thank for a
Speaker 1: lot of this um everywhere he went. It was a
Speaker 1: big deal. It was getting TV viewers from around the
Speaker 1: world more into wrestling and wrestlers benefited just from wrestling
Speaker 1: with him. Even losing against him was a big deal
Speaker 1: because you know, you'd be on TV in front of
Speaker 1: the biggest audiences or at Madison Square Garden to a
Speaker 1: sold out show. And uh no one benefited more from
Speaker 1: this relationship than a wrestler named hul Cogan. So Whole Cogan,
Speaker 1: did you guys know that he started out as a heel,
Speaker 1: as a bad guy. He's a bad guy. I had
Speaker 1: no idea. Well, he finally made the conversion over to
Speaker 1: a face, and when he did, he became the w
Speaker 1: ws like biggest star at a time when the w
Speaker 1: w F By this time they dropped that third w
Speaker 1: UM was as big as it as it ever was
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact. So he was huge and
Speaker 1: he had Andre the Giant to thank for that largely.
Speaker 1: And there was this ongoing k fabe fake um rivalry
Speaker 1: friendship between Andre the Giant and Whole Cooke and they
Speaker 1: were kind of friend of these on the WWF UM
Speaker 1: And then WrestleMania two came, I think in X and
Speaker 1: Andre the Giant one a twenty man battle roy how
Speaker 1: and he said, you know what, that's it. I'm good.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go into summer retirement. I'm not going to
Speaker 1: officially retire, but my body's breaking down from acromegaly. I
Speaker 1: drink fifty two beers a day on an average day.
Speaker 1: I think I'm good. I'm gonna just gonna go off
Speaker 1: and rest a little bit, and rather than wrestle, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna focus on a little film. I just got hired
Speaker 1: to to be an actor and called The Princess Bride.
Speaker 1: I saw people pre happening when you said a little film.
Speaker 1: This lady on the front row he said it, so,
Speaker 1: uh yeah. Fans of that movie anyone, clearly, I've never
Speaker 1: I've never met anyone that was like, yeah, it sucked right,
Speaker 1: totally fake. You know the A few weeks ago they
Speaker 1: announced they were remaking it. People are going, yeah, right,
Speaker 1: people are going nuts, and then other people are like,
Speaker 1: who cares, It doesn't take away from the original. People
Speaker 1: are arguing on the internet if you believe that this
Speaker 1: is no normally I do see. I am kind of like,
Speaker 1: it doesn't do anything to detract from the originals. We
Speaker 1: don't go see it. This one violates the laws of
Speaker 1: the universe. Remaking The Princess Pride, this one matters. Let's
Speaker 1: get down the street, because you know that Physic is
Speaker 1: going to be like the Rock or somebody, and I
Speaker 1: like the Rock. He's fine, he'll try a little too hard.
Speaker 1: He couldn't be physic. Now I'm worried the rock is
Speaker 1: going to be pheasant? Who else? I'm not going to
Speaker 1: sleep tonight. There's a fruit fly gene. Did you know this?
Speaker 1: That's called the physic gene because if you remove it,
Speaker 1: it produces fruit flies of unusual size. That's right, that's
Speaker 1: not a joke. The last part was a joke. It
Speaker 1: wasn't really a joke. It was a little one yap
Speaker 1: on the end of it. I wish I was not here.
Speaker 1: This part was supposed to be funny. The middle part
Speaker 1: it's sort of be a little sad and then be
Speaker 1: funny again at the end. We can cut all that out,
Speaker 1: yeah we will. Can't cut reality out right now that
Speaker 1: they love you, this is your second home. See just
Speaker 1: say another insider joke about the billboard guy or whatever
Speaker 1: if you feel like you're losing him. And yeah, we
Speaker 1: know enough to stay away from Dayton to beach. Right,
Speaker 1: Oh that's great. Don't even know where I am now.
Speaker 1: Princess Pride. That's where we are. So Rob Brianner hired
Speaker 1: him on the advice of the writer of the book
Speaker 1: and he said, there's this guy you should hire, Andre
Speaker 1: the Giant. Rob Brianner had never heard of him. Um,
Speaker 1: he's like more famous in Muhammad Ali. But Rob Brier like,
Speaker 1: I don't know where he was at the time. He
Speaker 1: was on drugs. It's not true, it could be true.
Speaker 1: So he was on all of the family, that's what
Speaker 1: he was doing. So he didn't know who Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant was. They sent him into audition and he couldn't
Speaker 1: understand what he was saying. And he was like, what
Speaker 1: am I supposed to do here? And they said, just
Speaker 1: hire Andre the Giants. Trust me. He fits the part
Speaker 1: and he's one of the biggest stars in the world.
Speaker 1: And he went okay, and that's it was kind of
Speaker 1: that easy. He said, we needed a giant. This guy
Speaker 1: was a giant. I just hired the giant. So Andre
Speaker 1: did not stop drinking during the film shoot. He continued
Speaker 1: on his normal ways. And there were three gentlemen named
Speaker 1: Chris so Randon, Kelly, carry Elise or Elvis apparently Sow.
Speaker 1: He really pronounced it really Yeah, I've been saying Elise
Speaker 1: my whole life. Yeah, I've been saying Elvis, not Elvis.
Speaker 1: He's riding the King's coat tails and and uh man
Speaker 1: deep a tankin all thought that they could hang with
Speaker 1: Andre the Giant at the bars. They were dead wrong
Speaker 1: and they could not. So many many days on set
Speaker 1: there are reports of those three guys, Andre showing up
Speaker 1: being like, let's go, let's do this, and those three
Speaker 1: kind of dragging their heels. It's probably the nicest say it.
Speaker 1: He also when he checked out of his room at
Speaker 1: the London Hyatt after the end of his shoot, um,
Speaker 1: he had a forty thousand dollar bar tap to pay
Speaker 1: to settle up, which means that he drank nearly all
Speaker 1: the contents of the mini bar in his room. Little
Speaker 1: hotel him. Yeah. See, so that began as a fact,
Speaker 1: and then I added a joke at the end. Oh man,
Speaker 1: it's so much more fun than in the studio. So
Speaker 1: I mean, no offense, we have a good time. I
Speaker 1: didn't take offensive, Okay, I didn't even cross my mind.
Speaker 1: I didn't want to make it sound like we know
Speaker 1: have fun in the studio, but when you add eight people,
Speaker 1: it's always more fun. I'm there. I know, we have firing.
Speaker 1: It's like Bud Bud break up in here. Where's a
Speaker 1: lot of snapping in the studio. We have a good time,
Speaker 1: a lot of mist uh. So Andre was really very
Speaker 1: sweet through this whole production and very nervous about his performance.
Speaker 1: He really really wanted to do a good job because
Speaker 1: he was on a movie set and it was a
Speaker 1: big movie and it was a really big deal to him,
Speaker 1: and he was very nervous. Um when he went to Toronto,
Speaker 1: I can say Toronto here, it's Toronto. Apparently just in Toronto. Yeah,
Speaker 1: everywhere else is Toronto. Uh in Toronto. At the premiere
Speaker 1: in ven his friend Tim White said he was actually
Speaker 1: shaking nervous during the premiere of the movie because he
Speaker 1: wasn't sure how the other actors were going to accept him. Um. Afterward,
Speaker 1: when they cheered and patted him on the back and everything,
Speaker 1: he was the happiest guy in the world, and so
Speaker 1: was I for him, It's very sweet. Yeah, it was
Speaker 1: a good friend huh Um. He loved his character so
Speaker 1: much he would carry a VHS copy of The Prince's
Speaker 1: Bride around with him, not like in his bag or
Speaker 1: in his hotel and him like around with him all right,
Speaker 1: he would say, look right, it's probably the scale. Actually.
Speaker 1: If anyone remembers VHS page, Um well you got me
Speaker 1: with that, um man just threw me off. Oh oh oh.
Speaker 1: So when he was on tour, well, like wrestling, afterward
Speaker 1: he would he would invite like fellow wrestlers up there,
Speaker 1: his friends with to like hang out in his room.
Speaker 1: And while he was there, he'd be like, Hey, here's
Speaker 1: the here's the room service man. You want to order
Speaker 1: anything you want to eat or drink, and he'd wait
Speaker 1: till it arrived, and then whoever was there would start
Speaker 1: eating and drinking and he'd be like, hey, you want
Speaker 1: to watch the Princess Brian now that I have you trap, yeah,
Speaker 1: And apparently so. Landi Pafo is um Randy Savage's brother
Speaker 1: and um and Andre was good friends with Landy Pafo.
Speaker 1: He did. Randy loved Landy. He did this to Lanny
Speaker 1: six times on one tour. By the end of the tour,
Speaker 1: Landy was like dodging and like hiding behind plants when
Speaker 1: he saw Andre because he didn't want to get invited
Speaker 1: up to watch the Princess Bridy. I can't believe he
Speaker 1: kept falling for it. Like after four times he was like,
Speaker 1: all right, I'll order the steak, but we're not going
Speaker 1: to watch the movie. Right, No, no, no, here, have dessert.
Speaker 1: Have dessert? All right? But he said, he said, Andre
Speaker 1: would point at the TV like when his part was
Speaker 1: coming up, and then when his part came, and when
Speaker 1: he'd laugh and clap and ask how he did every time,
Speaker 1: like he loved that movie and he loved that he
Speaker 1: he had had a part in it. Love it. Uh
Speaker 1: So during the shoot, his body was breaking down pretty bad. Though.
Speaker 1: There was that one scene where he has to catch
Speaker 1: Robin Wright who jumps into his arms, and Rob Renner,
Speaker 1: when he hired him, thought like, this is great. We
Speaker 1: have this this athlete and this wrestler and we won't
Speaker 1: have to hire a stunt person and he can do
Speaker 1: all this stuff. It turns out he couldn't do any
Speaker 1: of it because because of his back, and they had
Speaker 1: to lower Robin right down, who weighed like a hundred
Speaker 1: pounds on cables that they didn't had to greek out
Speaker 1: industry term. Did you do that? It was pretty impressive
Speaker 1: and uh yeah, so it was. It was a big deal.
Speaker 1: His body was breaking down. He was in really bad shape.
Speaker 1: He kind of soldier through because it was important to him,
Speaker 1: but he found himself at the end of Princess Pride
Speaker 1: and pretty rough shape physically. He did. He also found
Speaker 1: himself being visited in a surprise visit by Vince mcmon Jr.
Speaker 1: Who would by then dropped the W from WWWF just
Speaker 1: made it w w F and had overseen like its
Speaker 1: meteoric rise. Uh. And he showed up in England trying
Speaker 1: to convince Andre the Giant to come back to wrestling,
Speaker 1: and Andre was like, no, no, I really shouldn't do this,
Speaker 1: Probably the worst thing I could do. My body's breaking down.
Speaker 1: I'm in bad shape, can't even hold hundred pound Robin
Speaker 1: Wright pen um it's it's it's terrible. That was paraphrasing him.
Speaker 1: Um and Vince McMahon wouldn't take no for an answer
Speaker 1: and finally managed to break down his resistance and talked
Speaker 1: him into getting back surgery and arranged for it in England.
Speaker 1: And that is I said before um Under the Giant
Speaker 1: didn't even like to go to the doctor's office, wouldn't
Speaker 1: take pills, wouldn't take medications, didn't even take a list
Speaker 1: of drugs in the eighties in wrestling, like he just
Speaker 1: all he did was dream that was his medication drinking. UM.
Speaker 1: So the fact that he agreed to undergo back surgery,
Speaker 1: it's pretty baffling, but he did. He underwent back surgery,
Speaker 1: like I said, in England, And there's some urban legends
Speaker 1: about the surgery, like that they had to use oversized
Speaker 1: um surgical tools meant for a large animal veterinarian may
Speaker 1: or may not be true, but that the anesthesiologists UM
Speaker 1: had to guess at how much anesthesia to use. I'm
Speaker 1: sure that's super correct, but he did it based on
Speaker 1: UM how much alcohol Andre the giant drank, Like how
Speaker 1: much does it take for him to fall up out
Speaker 1: in the lobby of a hotel exactly what they call
Speaker 1: a piano cover night? How much is that? So? Uh,
Speaker 1: it depends on here talking to UM to see how
Speaker 1: this is viewed. Vince McMahon and big wrestling fans UM
Speaker 1: think they did him a big favor by revitalizing his
Speaker 1: career and bringing back in the spotlight. UM. Other people
Speaker 1: like us who are a little more contrarian to that
Speaker 1: point of view, say, no, you took advantage of this guy.
Speaker 1: Is obviously breaking down, um, just to sell more tickets
Speaker 1: and to exploit him, uh kind of till the end
Speaker 1: of his life, and then kicking him out into the
Speaker 1: cold when you're done with them, which some people say,
Speaker 1: booms McMahon, boooo, there you go. So now we can't
Speaker 1: wait too what we have to take another message. Just
Speaker 1: realized sorry, the spirit of the lizard on the toilet
Speaker 1: just spoke to me said, Josh, don't blow it. This
Speaker 1: is a really good one. You may release it. You
Speaker 1: gotta get a second one in there. So everybody, don't
Speaker 1: pee on me, if you'll, if you'll bear with us, yeah,
Speaker 1: really it's a pretty dangerous spot. Um, if you'll bear
Speaker 1: with us, we will be right back. All right, We're
Speaker 1: back again everyone. You guys like that every time, huh
Speaker 1: to uh to recap where we left Andre the giant
Speaker 1: body breaking down, Vince McMahon brings him back. And now
Speaker 1: we stumble upon a little event called WrestleMania three, which
Speaker 1: if you're a wrestling fan, it's this legendary event. It
Speaker 1: was held in Detroit at the Pontiac Silver Dome. They
Speaker 1: had plenty of smoke, trust me. Nine people at the
Speaker 1: Pontiac Silver Dome in Michigan, and it was one of
Speaker 1: the biggest sporting events sort of in history up to
Speaker 1: that point. And for this match, which whole Cogan wrote,
Speaker 1: and when Lee Majors heard that, he's like wait what
Speaker 1: he uh? Huld Cogan wrote the match, but Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant was was toying with him for weeks leading up
Speaker 1: to it because in the match, whole Cogan becomes like
Speaker 1: the champ of the WWF and it's a big deal.
Speaker 1: But um, when he would say like, hey, Andrea, if
Speaker 1: you have you seen the script, are you good with it?
Speaker 1: Andrea would just say something like yeah, yeah, don't worry
Speaker 1: about it, we'll work it out in the ring or whatever,
Speaker 1: and would not tell Hulk like, yes, you're going to win,
Speaker 1: We'll go along with your script. And in fact, whole
Speaker 1: Cogan didn't know he was going to win until the
Speaker 1: very end of this match, when Andre the Giant calls
Speaker 1: for a body slam and a leg drop. And apparently
Speaker 1: when whole Cogan body slammed Andre the Giant, he pulled
Speaker 1: a bicep and a quadricep trying to pick him up,
Speaker 1: and Andre the Giant was even like pressing off of
Speaker 1: him to help him and the whole Cogan still injured himself,
Speaker 1: which you're gonna do when you pick up Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant's just part and parcel with it. But he did
Speaker 1: win and the crowd went nuts. That's right after wrestleman
Speaker 1: A three. He continued wrestling because the w WF sort
Speaker 1: of kicked him to the curve. It was very sad,
Speaker 1: so he went back to where he started. He went
Speaker 1: to Japan and to mex Ago and wrestled on those
Speaker 1: circuits for a little while. Um he fought his last
Speaker 1: match in Japan just one month before he died, and
Speaker 1: by that time he had wrestled more than five thousand
Speaker 1: matches in his career. Times it's crazy. So towards the end,
Speaker 1: um he was like, nobody kicks Andre the Giant of
Speaker 1: the Curb. I'm going to wrestle on my own terms.
Speaker 1: And he started touring all over the place and he
Speaker 1: became a little more of like a booster. So he
Speaker 1: was like big time into tag team matches by them,
Speaker 1: because well, one he could walk out to the ring
Speaker 1: um with his arms flung over his tag team partner,
Speaker 1: which you know, people in the crowd was like, oh
Speaker 1: that's great, they're like total teammates. But really Andre was
Speaker 1: using the guy as a cane. And then also he
Speaker 1: could just kind of stand in the corner and like
Speaker 1: play up the drama but not actually wrestle. And the fans,
Speaker 1: though they were they were just happy he was there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they didn't care. Just having him in the building was enough.
Speaker 1: It was really really pretty cool. So here we are
Speaker 1: at the end. Very sadly. Andre's father, Boris, was approaching
Speaker 1: death in January of the age of eighty seven, and
Speaker 1: Andre went to see him in France before he died.
Speaker 1: He stayed there for his father's funeral and then he
Speaker 1: would die two weeks after that in France. So on
Speaker 1: the last day on Earth for Andre the Giant, he
Speaker 1: did what he loved more than anything else. He hung
Speaker 1: out with his oldest friends from his childhood in France,
Speaker 1: his family there, played tons of cribbage and drank lots
Speaker 1: and lots of really good French wine, farted on everybody,
Speaker 1: and he got dropped off at a hotel in Paris
Speaker 1: that he was staying at and he went up the
Speaker 1: stairs and that was the last time anyone saw him alive.
Speaker 1: The next morning, when he was supposed to be picked up.
Speaker 1: They went up to his room and knocked when he
Speaker 1: didn't appear, and finally opened up the door and found
Speaker 1: Andre the Giant dead in bed. He had died in
Speaker 1: the night of heart failure. Because the thing with a
Speaker 1: chromegley is um most of your body grows and grows
Speaker 1: and grows, but the heart doesn't, and the heart gets
Speaker 1: taxed over over, you know, forty six years in the
Speaker 1: case of Andre the Giant, until it just can't beat
Speaker 1: any longer. And so that's what happened Andre the Giant.
Speaker 1: His heart just gave out. Uh So there wasn't a
Speaker 1: crematorium in France that could handle his body. So they
Speaker 1: flew him back to North Carolina and a giant custom
Speaker 1: built coffin and apparently did the WWF steal the coffin,
Speaker 1: that's the word you could use. Yeah, after they flew
Speaker 1: him back. Yeah. Yeah, They didn't like like roll his
Speaker 1: body out mid flight or something. They just basically went
Speaker 1: until he was to fly him back. No no, no, no, okay,
Speaker 1: They flew Hi back and then stall it, yes, to
Speaker 1: like basically take the headquarters for to put on display.
Speaker 1: You see, okay, you see, Chuck, you see, we're working
Speaker 1: it out. Mid show. So the w w E at
Speaker 1: this point established its Hall of Fame, and Andre the
Speaker 1: Giant was the very first and only inductee in that
Speaker 1: inaugural class. And every year now the w w E
Speaker 1: still holds a Battle Royal all Uh named after Andre
Speaker 1: the Giant in his honor, which is, if you stop him,
Speaker 1: think about it, the pinnacle of human existence to have
Speaker 1: a Battle Royale held in your name every year, like
Speaker 1: each one of us in this room should aspire to
Speaker 1: that in this Okay, let's make a pact right now, everybody,
Speaker 1: we can do it. So um. I mentioned his daughter
Speaker 1: Robin earlier and the fact that they weren't close, and
Speaker 1: this is sort of one of the sad parts of
Speaker 1: the of his life was that, you know, when you're
Speaker 1: wrestling five thousand times in a career, in three thirty
Speaker 1: nights a year, you're not like anyone in the entertainment
Speaker 1: business who tours and travels a lot. You're not gonna
Speaker 1: be around your family much. So he had a daughter
Speaker 1: that he did not get to see that much. Um
Speaker 1: he had an ex wife that he did not get
Speaker 1: along with at all, which didn't help matters. I don't
Speaker 1: think they were ever actually married an okay, so an
Speaker 1: X that didn't get along with so they weren't not
Speaker 1: like working it out so we could see Robin Um.
Speaker 1: There was one time where he tried to have her
Speaker 1: flown to North Carolina and she was sort of scared
Speaker 1: to fly, so he sent his good friend Jackie to
Speaker 1: go collect her and meet her at the airport, and
Speaker 1: at the last second she kind of backed out, yeah,
Speaker 1: because she was like, I'm going to hang out with
Speaker 1: my dad who have met twice, and my mom's not
Speaker 1: allowed to come, and I'm nine years old. I'm a
Speaker 1: little freaked out. So that trip didn't work out. They
Speaker 1: did keep in touch, mostly over the phone, but like
Speaker 1: whenever he came through town for wrestling, like she would
Speaker 1: come and hang out with the backstage and Jackie McAuley Um,
Speaker 1: one of his two closest friends, later said that no
Speaker 1: matter what it looked like from the outside, Andre really
Speaker 1: really loved his daughter. And when he died, he left
Speaker 1: a sum to Jackie, a sum to his other best friend, Frenchie,
Speaker 1: and then the rest was left to Robin Yeah, including
Speaker 1: the rights to his likeness and image, which I think
Speaker 1: we all know is where the real money sat, right
Speaker 1: that's the sweetest plow. So I think she was trying
Speaker 1: to do a documentary or something about him for a while,
Speaker 1: with the very least interviewing like old friends of his,
Speaker 1: so she could learn more about him. Right, very sweet.
Speaker 1: So he had a quote towards the end of his
Speaker 1: life I'm sorry at the height of his career, where
Speaker 1: he said I've had good fortune and I'm grateful for
Speaker 1: my life. If I were to die tomorrow, I know
Speaker 1: I've eaten more good food, drunk more beer and fine wine,
Speaker 1: and had more friends and seeing more of the world
Speaker 1: than most men ever will. I've had everything in life
Speaker 1: but a family, and I hope to have that one day.
Speaker 1: For now, I know a family wouldn't work because of
Speaker 1: my traveling, but one day, who knows, I might myself
Speaker 1: have a giant for grandson, and that is under the giant. Everybody,
Speaker 1: all right, kind, thank you, everybody, thank you, thank you.
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