Andre the Giant Read online

  McMahon was introduced to the man-mountain who would be his greatest success by Frank Valois, who was concerned that André had already run out of credible opponents in the Montreal territory. In 1973 the New York promoter took charge of Jean Ferre’s career, beginning by giving him the name by which he would be known around the world: André the Giant.

  McMahon also modified André’s gimmick, suggesting he cloak his natural athleticism and instead allow his sheer bulk and remarkable size to do the work for him. André need simply loom large as an unstoppable, immovable colossus, allowing his opponents to do the majority of the in-ring work before finally being crushed by the monster.

  VINCE K. MCMAHON: “André was doing dropkicks when he was up there in Montreal. Even though he could, why let him do dropkicks? He was very agile, very quick. I wouldn’t say he had a lot of speed, but God he was quick.”

  On March 26, 1973, André the Giant made his World Wide Wrestling Federation debut, defeating Buddy Wolfe at Madison Square Garden.

  The Giant was an out-of-the-box phenomenon, and every wrestling promotion in North America began clamoring for an appearance. McMahon sent André on the road to do one-night stands in every territory associated with WWWF, including the NWA and AWA. For the next ten years, André worked nearly nonstop, touring the world countless times.

  By keeping André on the move, never spending too long in any territory, McMahon ensured that the extraordinary novelty of the Giant would not be worn away by prolonged exposure.

  VINCE MCMAHON: “My dad booked André all over the world. It was almost a separate part of his book—how many weeks he was going to be here, how many weeks he was going to be there. André knew he was being booked for the right reasons, but he also knew my dad had some political reasons too. He didn’t have a problem with that, and if he did, then he would say something to my dad. When he did, he wouldn’t say, ‘This guy is a thief’ or anything. ‘I didn’t have a good time there last time.’ And my dad knew exactly what he meant.”

  JERRY LAWLER: “You had to book André the Giant through World Wide Wrestling Federation. You could call Vince Sr. and ask for André for three days or a week or whatever. To get him, you’d have to guarantee André a certain amount and you had to pay the company an extra booking fee.”

  JACK BRISCO: “I was World’s Champion and Vince had just started André touring the country, so in just about every territory in the whole country, when they would have big shows, he and I would headline. I never wrestled him—he would be with somebody else, I’d be wrestling their local star. But he and I, we had top billing on the big shows all over the country for around three years.”

  HOWARD FINKEL: “Next to the person who was the NWA champion, I would suggest André was the most sought-after person that was out there. No, he was the most sought after, forget about the NWA champion. Everybody wanted André.”

  André’s run through the various territories saw him shattering box office records everywhere he went. Billed as seven-foot-four, 420 pounds, the Giant was promoted with a gimmicky photo showing him carrying two women wrestlers on each outstretched arm. Announcers would sit while interviewing André, or have him stand on a box, to further exaggerate his enormous height.

  As a rule, André was kept away from the top heels so as not to damage their draw in the territory. Rather, he was usually booked in Battle Royals or in Handicap matches that pitted him against Valois—who’d call the match in the ring—and a local wrestler who would take the majority of the bumps.

  HOWARD FINKEL: “You had to find the perfect use for André. If you had André for a week, you’d better book him right. You’d better know how to use him, because if you don’t know how to book him in your territory, then there’s no need to farm him out there again. It’s just going to be a waste of your time as well as our time.”

  JACK BRISCO: “We were in Houston, Texas, when I was World’s Champion, they were having a two-ring Battle Royal, so they had like thirty guys there. In the old days, we had to get there an hour before the matches started. The matches started at eight, and we had to be there at seven. I walked in, André had a cooler full of beer and a couple of bottles of wine. He drank that whole cooler full of beer and all three of those bottles of wine before the matches, and it didn’t faze him a bit.

  “Then the thirty-man Battle Royal started. We all got in the ring; I could see him eyeballing me, and I knew he was gonna do something crazy to me. As soon as the bell rang, he ran across the ring and grabbed me. He picked me up over his head and just ran across the ring and threw me from the middle of the one ring and into the middle of the next ring.

  “I landed and I bounced about three times. I laid there for a minute and thought, ‘Do my legs move? Yeah. Do my arms move? Yeah. Well, I guess I could try to stand up.’ All the boys just stopped and looked to see if I was gonna get up. I finally got up and everybody started wrestling again. It was kinda scary, though. Talk about a helpless feeling.”

  Part of André’s job as a star was to go from territory to territory putting local people over in order to keep the money rolling in long after he had moved on. The wrestler George Gray—better known as One Man Gang— recalls how the Giant helped elevate him while he was coming up in the Mid-South ranks.

  ONE MAN GANG: “I had the other idea, that he was coming in as a babyface enforcer to straighten out the big heel. But it was totally opposite. He’d come in and sell for the whole match. And of course you’re gonna put André the Giant over in the end, but other than that he gave the heel the whole match.

  “What amazed me about it was that he would actually make the time to take me to the side and try to wise me up to it. After that, I’d go out there, we’d do the big André spots, like where you’d try to reach around him and he’d do that ass thing where he bumped you off, things like that. But when it was time for me to take over, he’d give me a little ‘Okay, boss, it’s time’ and I’d move out of the corner and he’d hit the turnbuckle or something like that. I’d take over on him, it’d be my match the whole way to the finish. He’d always do his little spot where I’d give him some shots and he’d tie himself up in the ropes.

  “The main thing, he wanted you to just stay on him tight. He didn’t want you to give him any breathing room. Then when it was time for his comeback, he got his little comeback in. Usually he’d give you a big boot and maybe the big splash or something like that. If it was a pinfall, then we’d get on outta there. But more often than not we went to a countout or a disqualification.”

  JERRY LAWLER: “André knew Jerry Jarrett and I owned the Memphis territory, so when he came in, he was basically working for us, although he wound up working with me in the matches. He was always very respectful and he would call me ‘boss,’ a term he used for people he liked. He’d greet me, ‘Hey, boss.’ He was real easygoing. He’d let you do anything you wanted in a match. Other than beat him. If he liked you, he would sell like crazy and he could make you look like a million dollars. You had to work to get him off his feet, but once you did, man, it looked good. You could choke him, pull his hair, punch, kick, everything. He would stay down and sell until it was time for the big comeback.

  “But if he didn’t like you, he’d make you look like crap, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it. It was all about strength, and he had that in spades.”

  André parted ways with Frank Valois in 1974, and McMahon Sr. named one of his closest advisers to serve as André’s manager, accompanying the Giant on the road and supervising his booking from territory to territory. Arnold Skaaland had returned home from World War II a hero and began competing as a professional wrestler. Known as “the Golden Boy,” he was quick and tough enough to earn multiple shots at the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, though he never truly became a top-of-the-card star.

  TIM WHITE: “Arnie was a legend. He was an ex-marine, he was in Carson’s Raiders, he took a grenade in China. He was a tough bastard. If there was a guy acting up over in another territory, the
y’d send Skaaland in, he’d stretch the shit out of the guy and that’d be it. There’d be no more screwing around.”

  As a shareholder in Capital Wrestling, Skaaland was one of Vince McMahon Sr.’s most trusted associates. He consulted on all aspects of the business, from booking to decisions to overseeing the nightly box office take.

  In addition to running WWWF shows in his hometown of Westchester, New York, Skaaland was a major figure at ringside, managing two of the World Wrestling Federation’s greatest champions, Bruno Sammartino and Bob Backlund.

  It was in his capacity as Backlund’s manager that Skaaland entered the

  annals of wrestling history’s most memorable moments. In December 1983, Backlund accepted a challenge from the Iron Sheik despite having recently suffered a neck injury. When the Iron Sheik caught Backlund in his Camel Clutch, Skaaland threw in the towel—literally—to protect his wrestler’s neck from further harm, costing his charge the championship.

  André & Arnold Skaaland go before the TV cameras, 1982.

  Skaaland and André made a perfect pair. The two bonded over their mutual interests—wrestling, drinking, and playing cards. Skaaland became André’s dearest companion, the two spending their time on the road together by closing bars nightly and engaging in a seemingly endless game of cribbage.

  TIM WHITE: “Arnie and André traveled together everywhere, representing the McMahons. When André went to Japan, Arnie would go with him to Japan. If André went to Mexico, they’d go together. André probably wouldn’t have gone unless Arnie was with him.”

  VINCE McMAHON: “André and Arnie loved the business. They had a good time doing what they did, not just in the ring but in life. They had a good time traveling up and down the highways, having a drink, closing down bars, and just laughing all the time.”

  TIM WHITE: “Arnie used to say, ‘People ask, doesn’t the job wear you out? Job? We don’t have a job. We’re on vacation, brother.’”

  André and Skaaland traveled constantly, often flying halfway around the world to get from one show to the next. The busy schedule did have its upside—the 1974 Guinness Book of World Records listed André as “the Highest Paid Wrestler in the World,” with official earnings of $400,000.

  His drawing power was such that the Washington Redskins offered André a tryout, which he declined, knowing he had greater earning potential as a wrestler. He is said to have asked for the same $400,000 he was pocketing as a wrestler—more than the NFL paid at the time.

  VINCE McMAHON: “It was really just publicity, and everybody went along with it. There were some guys who had no idea that we were just having fun, that thought, ‘Oh my God, can you imagine what this guy would do? André would be like half of the line.’

  “André had no intention of trying out for football. He was making too much money in wrestling. I don’t know what they could’ve paid him, especially as a lineman. The linemen were really low on the totem pole. But that notwithstanding, it was really just a publicity stunt anyhow.”

  With his frizzed-out mane and enormous presence, André was instantly recognizable and immediately iconic. He began receiving mainstream attention, rare for a wrestler in the 1970s. He appeared on The Tonight Show (with guest host Joey Bishop) and The Merv Griffin Show, and was featured in such magazines as People and Sports Illustrated.

  It was inevitable that Hollywood would come a-calling. In early 1976 André made his acting debut on the hugely popular sci-fi series The Six Million Dollar Man. When the show decided to capitalize on the craze surrounding Sasquatch sightings, the creative team knew there was really only one man who could realistically portray the eight-foot-tall forest creature.

  “Obviously we needed a big guy to do it,” recalls writer/director Kenneth Johnson. “We looked around at who could’ve filled those shoes, and there weren’t too many other seven-and-a-half-foot-tall guys around.”

  Johnson—who later created such classic shows as The Bionic Woman, V, and The Incredible Hulk—remembers André as being both reticent and respectful while filming the episodes.

  “He was a very shy, sweet guy. It was probably one of the first film things that he had ever done, so he was completely bewildered about the whole process. But he was also very, very friendly and anxious to please. When I met him at the trailer on the set and walked him out, there was a bit of a look of a frightened puppy in his eyes, which is amusing when you think of the mass that the guy represents. I mean, not only was he a foreigner, not only did he not speak the language, but he was seven-and-a-half feet tall and built like two or three file cabinets.

  “I took pains to introduce him to all the cast and the crew people. You get stared at a lot when you’re that kind of guy, and I had a conversation with the cast and crew ahead of time to encourage them to be friendly and outgoing and make him as comfortable as he possibly could be, since it was his virgin effort in the film business.”

  Hidden under prosthetic makeup and a fur-covered bodysuit, André battled seven-figure cyborg Steve Austin in a memorable fight scene that took advantage of the Giant’s grappling skills. While he might have yet lacked confidence as an actor, André was more than comfortable engaging in staged fisticuffs with actor Lee Majors.

  KENNETH JOHNSON: “We worked through all of the choreography of the fights because Lee was our big star and we wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to get hurt by this four-hundred-pound behemoth. Lee is sort of a terse guy anyway, doesn’t say a whole lot. They nodded and smiled a lot. Lee also recognized that it was André’s first gig and was anxious to try to make him look as good as he could.”

  Years later, Entertainment Weekly named the episode the number 100 Television Moment of the 1970s in their “Fab 400: The Best of Pop Culture”: “Depending on who you ask, it’s either one of the scariest or campiest of TV moments: Steve Austin (Lee Majors)—the bionic hero of ABC’s The Six Million Dollar Man—duking it out with a hairy beast known as the Sasquatch (7’4” grappler André the Giant). As millions of kids watched in horror, Sasquatch treated their favorite cyborg like a rag doll. ‘That’s the episode everybody always brings up,’ laughs Majors, who ultimately won the fight. ‘Maybe because the ugly fella was so big, you couldn’t forget him.’”

  KENNETH JOHNSON: “Later on, when we did ‘The Return of Bigfoot,’ we of course went to André first, but he was making more money on the wrestling circuit than all of us put together, so he couldn’t carve out the time we needed for him.”

  In June 1976, André was a central player in another pop cultural milestone moment, the infamous “Boxer vs. Wrestler” debacle between Muhammad Ali and wrestling legend—and founder of New Japan Pro Wrestling—Antonio Inoki for “the World Martial Arts Championship.” While that match was taking place in Japan, half a world away, in New York’s Shea Stadium, André had his own mixed match—the Giant represented wrestling in a raucous brawl with boxer Chuck Wepner.

  The main event had its genesis in some trademark Ali egotism. The champ was at the peak of his international fame after the legendary “Thrilla in Manila,” his third and most brutal bout with Joe Frazier. Having absorbed an incredible amount of damage in that classic fight—“as close to death as you can get in the ring,” according to Ali’s physician, Ferdie “the Fight Doctor” Pacheco—Ali spent the first part of 1976 taking on low-ranked unknowns. Attending a party in April 1975, the champ was introduced to Japan Amateur Wrestling Association president Ichiro Yada. “Isn’t there any Oriental fighter to challenge me?” Ali asked. “I’ll give him a million dollars if he wins.”

  Ali’s joking remarks made it into the Japanese press, spurring Inoki to pursue a match between the two icons. Ali eventually accepted, with his handlers and promoter Bob Arum all thinking the match would be a piece of cake. After all, professional wrestling is fake, right?

  Inoki had other ideas. His New Japan Pro Wrestling was founded upon an innovative blend of pure wrestling technique—or puroresu—and mixed martial arts, or “strong style professional wrestl
ing.” To him, the Ali match was a chance to prove once and for all that professional wrestling was among the greatest of all martial arts.

  Face-to-face with Chuck Wepner.

  What’s more, Inoki had long desired fame in the United States, one of the rare goals that had eluded him over the course of an extraordinary career that included a record-setting four NWA International Tag Team titles with the great Giant Baba, the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship, the NWA United National Championship, the NWA North American Tag Team Championship (with Seiji Sakaguchi), and a controversial victory over World Wrestling Federation Champion Bob Backlund.

  Ali, with “Classy” Freddie Blassie acting as his manager (as arranged by Vince McMahon Sr.), arrived in Japan on June 16 amid worldwide attention. At their first meeting, he unleashed some of his inimitable verbal warfare. Inoki, in a move that foreshadowed the bout’s result, presented the champ with a crutch.

  In Blassie’s memoir, Hisashi Shinma explained how Ali was enticed into the match. “We did it by offering him $6 million—more money than any boxer had ever received.”

  Ali and Blassie sold the hell out of the match, working talk shows across America. The champ joined his longtime friendly nemesis Howard Cosell on ABC’s Wide World of Sports, where he squashed a couple of AWA jobbers, followed by a more serious match with Buddy Wolfe. The match was stopped due to Wolfe’s bleeding, prompting his manager Bobby Heenan to come rushing into the ring to complain. The champ nailed the Brain with a massive punch, sending Heenan down to the canvas.

  A week before the match, Ali appeared at a WWWF event in Philadelphia. He stood at ringside during Gorilla Monsoon’s match with Baron Mikel Scicluna. After Monsoon threw the Baron over the ropes, Ali pulled off his shoes and climbed into the ring. As he danced about, floating like the proverbial butterfly, Gorilla picked him up, put him on his shoulders, and executed a humiliating airplane spin on the Greatest.