SYSK Live: Andre the Giant

Andre the Giant was a giant both figuratively and literally. Sure he was a wrestler, but more than that he was a human being who left a great legacy behind. Even if you're not a wrestling fan, you can appreciate his story. Join us for this very special live edition of the story of Andre the Giant. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, Seattle, will see you Thursday, January sixteenth at the
More Theater in San Francisco. We're going to be at
the Castro on January when else? Chuck? Uh? That is it? Man?
January eighteenth at the Castro, our annual trip to Sketch Fest.
We love performing there. We have great crowds there. Go
get a ticket. If you want to come see me
at Movie Crush the next night on Sunday and a

(00:21):
small venue where you can shake my hand and hug
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,

(00:47):
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

(01:09):
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

(01:31):
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

(01:51):
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

(02:12):
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

(02:36):
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.

(03:04):
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

(03:26):
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

(03:47):
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,

(04:08):
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.

(04:31):
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

(04:53):
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

(05:16):
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

(05:38):
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

(06:01):
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

(06:23):
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.

(06:47):
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

(07:10):
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.

(07:30):
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

(07:53):
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

(08:15):
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

(08:37):
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

(08:59):
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

(09:23):
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,

(09:48):
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

(10:09):
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,

(10:31):
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

(10:53):
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

(11:16):
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.

(11:36):
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

(11:59):
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

(12:19):
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

(12:41):
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

(13:02):
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,

(13:25):
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

(13:46):
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.

(14:06):
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

(14:28):
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.

(14:49):
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

(15:11):
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

(15:34):
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,

(15:56):
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

(16:18):
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

(16:38):
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

(17:00):
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

(17:20):
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

(17:43):
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.

(18:04):
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

(18:25):
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

(18:47):
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

(19:09):
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

(19:29):
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

(19:52):
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,

(20:14):
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

(20:35):
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

(20:56):
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

(21:18):
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

(21:38):
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

(21:59):
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

(22:19):
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

(22:41):
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.

(23:06):
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

(23:29):
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

(23:49):
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

(24:11):
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

(24:33):
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

(24:54):
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.

(25:15):
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,

(25:39):
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,

(26:13):
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

(26:34):
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.

(26:58):
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.

(27:19):
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

(27:40):
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,

(28:03):
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

(28:23):
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

(28:43):
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

(29:07):
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

(29:28):
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

(29:49):
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

(30:10):
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

(30:31):
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

(30:52):
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

(31:14):
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

(31:37):
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

(31:59):
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

(32:22):
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,

(32:44):
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

(33:08):
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

(33:30):
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,

(33:51):
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.

(34:17):
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

(34:38):
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.

(34:59):
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

(35:22):
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

(35:44):
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

(36:07):
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

(36:27):
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

(36:50):
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,

(37:12):
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

(37:34):
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

(37:55):
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

(38:16):
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

(38:37):
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

(39:00):
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

(39:21):
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

(39:45):
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

(40:05):
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

(40:25):
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,

(40:47):
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,

(41:09):
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

(41:31):
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

(41:51):
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

(42:12):
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

(42:33):
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,

(42:56):
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,

(43:18):
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

(43:41):
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

(44:04):
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

(44:25):
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

(44:47):
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,

(45:08):
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,

(45:28):
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

(45:50):
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?

(46:10):
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.

(46:33):
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

(46:56):
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

(47:18):
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.

(47:39):
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

(48:00):
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

(48:21):
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

(48:43):
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

(49:05):
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.

(49:27):
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.

(49:49):
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

(50:10):
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

(50:31):
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

(50:54):
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

(51:16):
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

(51:38):
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.

(52:02):
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.

(52:22):
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

(52:45):
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.

(53:08):
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

(53:29):
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

(53:51):
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

(54:15):
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

(54:38):
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.

(55:00):
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

(55:22):
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

(56:03):
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

(56:24):
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,

(56:47):
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?

(57:09):
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

(57:29):
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

(57:50):
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

(58:10):
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

(58:32):
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.

(58:53):
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

(59:15):
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

(59:35):
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

(59:58):
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

(01:00:19):
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.

(01:00:41):
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

(01:01:01):
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

(01:01:25):
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

(01:01:47):
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

(01:02:08):
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,

(01:02:28):
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

(01:02:48):
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

(01:03:10):
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,

(01:03:35):
all right, kind, thank you, everybody, thank you, thank you.
Stuff you should know is a production of iHeart Radios.
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(01:03:56):
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