When he wasn’t traveling for his wrestling engagements, André largely kept to himself in his North Carolina ranch home, which featured a tree growing through the middle of each of its three stories. "Giants fart for extremely long periods of time." 6. “This went on for like 30 seconds,” Roberts said. In one bout, Jake “The Snake” Roberts recalled that André waited until Roberts was on the mat before he squatted down and unleashed his flatulence. During matches, he amused himself by stepping on an opponent’s long hair or wringing the sweat from his singlet into their face. HE HAD FUN FARTING ON OPPONENTS.īy most accounts, André was a jovial giant, content to play cards, socialize, and enjoy all the food and drink his success afforded him. Said to have fingers so large that silver dollars could pass through his rings, André could never use a conventional rotary phone without sticking a pencil in the dial learning to play the piano was also out of the question, since one finger would strike three keys at once. While André’s height and girth proved to be problematic when it came to traveling-most vehicles made for uncomfortable rides that required him to slouch-his hands and fingers posed special challenges.
The smaller vehicles could be easily slid over to tight spaces or turned to face the opposite direction. His resistance training seemed to come in the form of moving his friends' cars around during nights he was out drinking with friends. Because his body was so generous in its strength, André rarely (if ever) lifted weights for additional power. HE ENJOYED MOVING CARS AS A PRANK.Īndré’s dimensions were the result of acromegaly, a disorder of the pituitary gland that causes uninhibited growth hormone secretion. As André explained his career choice, they realized they had even seen him wrestle on television under his alias, Jean Ferré, without ever knowing they had been watching their own son. According to a 1981 Sports Illustrated profile, André had grown so dramatically in the interim, stretching to nearly 7 feet tall, that his parents did not recognize the stranger who knocked on their door.
Angry giant stepping on people professional#
At 19, he visited his parents for the first time, having already broken into the professional wrestling business. When Andre turned 14, he left home to seek employment and opportunities outside the boundaries of his rural farm community in France. HE GREW SO FAST HIS OWN PARENTS DIDN’T RECOGNIZE HIM. Still, the unlikely pairing has inspired several plays, including the recent Sam & Dede, Or My Dinner with André the Giant. Over the years, the story has been exaggerated to the point where Beckett and Andre are the only occupants in the truck, though it's unlikely Beckett paid him any particular attention. (There was no bus.) Like many of the kids, Andre would sometimes accept Beckett's invitation to hop on the back of his pick-up truck to get a ride to school. The property was just a few hundred yards from the Roussimoff residence and along a stretch of road where Andre and other school children started their walk to class. In the 1950s, playwright and novelist Samuel Beckett took up residence in Ussy-sur-Marne in France and commissioned local laborers to construct a cottage. As it turns out, the Giant’s life needed no embellishment. In the meantime, we’ve sifted through some of the more sensational stories to separate fact from fiction. HBO's new documentary, which just premiered, may resolve some of those urban legends. It’s fitting that André’s mythological proportions have led to a number of myths surrounding his life, from an exaggerated height (he was often billed as 7 feet, 4 inches) to his alleged propensity for drinking hundreds of beers. Born André Roussimoff in Grenoble, France on May 19, 1946, the towering grappler stood nearly 7 feet tall and weighed over 500 pounds shortly before his death in 1993 due to heart failure. Although a number of professional wrestlers have transcended the squared circle to become worldwide stars-Hulk Hogan, The Rock, and Jesse Ventura among them-few have captivated the public quite like André the Giant.
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