Andre the Giant

by Michael Krugman

  Meanwhile, Inoki did his part to create buzz for the upcoming event. He defeated two-time Olympic gold medalist in judo Willem Ruska in a worked match, landing three back suplexes to demonstrate how wrestling could take out an opponent from another martial art.

  On June 25, 1976, Inoki and Ali finally met in the ring of Tokyo’s Budokan Hall. Though the rules had been announced months prior to the match, new striking-only rules were stipulated just two days before the event. Apparently Ali and his people had been doing some scouting, and upon seeing Inoki in action, needed cover to protect the champ from being humiliated on the mat. There would be no suplexes, no headbutts or knees or open-handed slaps. Most significantly, there were to be no kicks above the waist. Perhaps the most disastrous of the new rules was one that restricted Inoki from throwing kicks unless one knee was on the canvas. The new rules served to constrain both athletes, thus setting up the disappointing match that followed.

  The bell rang and Inoki hit the mat, spending 2:46 of the first round on the canvas, throwing kicks as Ali deftly danced around the ring. Though few kicks connected, by Round 3, an open cut had appeared on Ali’s left knee. Then, in Round 8, Ali’s trainer, Angelo Dundee, insisted that Inoki tape up his laces, claiming the tips were cutting the champ’s leg.

  Over the course of fifteen long rounds, Ali threw a mere six punches, as Inoki maintained a defensive posture throughout. Prevented by the rules from using his grappling strength and acumen, Inoki spent most of his time on the mat, throwing kick after kick at the boxer’s legs.

  The match was ultimately called a draw, though had Inoki not lost points for a karate kick and accidental knee to Ali’s groin in the thirteenth round, he’d have won.

  At the time, the only losers were the fans, many of whom had shelled out significant money to witness an overhyped fiasco of the highest order. Sadly, the match is said to have began the decline of Ali’s career. The open cuts on his leg became so badly infected that amputation was considered a possibility. Moreover, the stream of stiff kicks caused the formation of two potentially life-threatening blood clots in his agile legs. Though he continued to fight for five more years, Ali never scored another knockout. His mobility and punching power were never the same.

  The Ali vs. Inoki match was shown as the “main event” at wrestling cards around the world, including 150 closed-circuit locations across America. Each territory featured its own undercard, with WWWF offering a championship match between Bruno Sammartino and challenger Stan Hansen. In Chicago, fans saw AWA World Heavyweight Champion Nick Bockwinkel taking on Verne Gagne, while the NWA put on a show at the Houston Coliseum featuring Terry Funk in a title defense against Rocky Johnson.

  The WWWF also presented an additional “Boxer vs. Wrestler” match, pitting André against heavyweight challenger Chuck Wepner. A New Jersey club fighter known as the Bayonne Bleeder, Wepner had been plucked from obscurity the year before to take on Muhammad Ali. The match ended up going fifteen rounds, and while Ali was the eventual winner, Wepner gained such notoriety that he inspired Sylvester Stallone’s immortal creation Rocky Balboa.

  The match—held before a crowd of 32,000 at New York’s Shea Stadium—began with Wepner spending the first two rounds taunting André. Though he was six-foot-five, 230 pounds, Wepner still appeared tiny next to the Giant. He circled the bemused André, throwing a few jabs, which André largely ignored. A showman to his core, he knew how easy it would be to finish Wepner off and opted to give the fans a few rounds.

  But in Round 3, Wepner connected, hitting André square in the face. The punch got André’s attention. He snorted and hit Wepner with a reverse atomic drop and a headbutt, then lifted the big boxer like a child and tossed

  Post-match melee.

  him over the top rope. Wepner bounced off the apron and then fell to the infield, where he was counted out.

  “Look, boss,” André told writer Terry Todd in his seminal Sports Illustrated piece. “The boxer-wrestler business is almost a joke. After all, a man may hit me a couple of times, but if I cut the ring off and close in, what can he do after I put my hands on him? The boxer has no chance, since he can’t even wrestle in a clinch because of his gloves.”

  In the moments following the bell, a brawl began between Wepner’s crew and World Wide Wrestling Federation officials—including André’s cornerman, Gorilla Monsoon. Wepner got back in the ring and went after André, nailing him with a big right that left the Giant stunned. André shook it off, then grabbed hold of Wepner. Fortunately, handlers were able to split them apart before it got seriously ugly.

  Despite its lack of technical majesty, the match only served to increase André’s growing legend. In 1977 he was named Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s “Most Popular Wrestler.” He was without doubt the biggest draw in wrestling—literally and figuratively—and as such was in constant demand. Promoters around the world hungered for André to visit their territory and put over the top heel. André battled night after night with a rogue’s gallery that included Ric Flair, Nick Bockwinkel, Abdullah the Butcher, Ken Patera, Blackjack Mulligan, and NWA World Champion Harley Race.

  Along the way he fought countless Battle Royals and Handicap matches, not to mention his innumerable singles bouts. André even took on Gorilla Monsoon in a WWWF event at Roberto Clemente Stadium in Puerto Rico. There was a catch, however—the two gigantic babyfaces were pitted in a boxing match, refereed by Jersey Joe Walcott. Though André won with a third-round KO, the match marked a historic moment for Monsoon, making him the only man to ever box André and wrestle Muhammad Ali.

  Among André’s most successful programs was his long-running feud with the groundbreaking Ernie Ladd. Known as “the Big Cat,” Ladd was a four-time AFL All-Star defensive tackle who appeared in three AFL championship games, winning titles in 1963 with the San Diego Chargers and in 1967 with the Kansas City Chiefs. During the off-season, the six-foot-nine, 315-pound Ladd began wrestling in the Los Angeles territory and soon became reviled as one of the sport’s great heels. His arrogant interviews and controversial use of a taped thumb as a weapon made him a hated figure throughout the territories, which in turn made him the ideal foil for the hugely popular André. The two wrestled regularly across the country in matches promoted as “Battles of the Giants,” with the babyface André threatening to depose Ladd from whichever championship he was holding at the time.

  “The reason André the Dummy wants me so bad is because I beat him in Los Angeles,” growled Ladd in a 1978 interview with NWA Tri-State Wrestling’s Reeser Bowden.

  He goes around telling people he’s never been beat, which is a lie. We were in a couple of Battle Royals, for two or three years André the Giant never lost a Battle Royal, but I decided to enter some of the Battle Royals that André the Dummy was in, and I beat that dummy several times in Battle Royals. Now, he feels that he could really hurt me if he could get a shot at the North American title and take my belt, well André the Dummy, you got a shot! The only shot you gonna get, right in your mouth! Your big mouth!

  Now, I beat you on several occasions and I will beat you again. And if you stand in my face and call me a liar, I’ll slap your face

  Sending Ernie Ladd into the ropes.

  real good in the general public! Goin’ round, tellin’ people that you’ve never been beat before. I want you in the squared circle worse than you wanna get in the squared circle! I will slap your face and whup your fanny real good! For all my fans, anytime, anywhere, Big Boy! Don’t call me out, ’cause I am the true champion! Oh! I just get so sick down inside, it make me wanna throw up just thinkin’ about how bad I would like to slap your face! I would slap your face in the presence of your parents, let alone in the presence of all the fans, and pin you again, dummy!

  ERNIE LADD: “André was great box office, massive box office. Massive man. Learned how to make money. Good student of Vince McMahon’s. What made him special, he learned that he could probably control an audience and bring them back again. Many people could draw an audi
ence for the first time and then never get them back to the arena. He could draw them over and over. He was a good guy. He was moody now and then. But most of all he was a good guy.”

  Late in 1978 André won rare championship gold as one half of two tag teams. First, he teamed with Ron Miller to defeat Butch Brannigan & Ox Baker and win NWA Australian Tag Team titles. Unfortunately, the promotion closed later that month, vacating the title through 1982.

  Then, on Christmas Day, André paired with the American Dream, Dusty Rhodes, in a ten-team NWA Tri-State United States Tag Team Championship tournament at the Mid-South SuperDome Extravaganza in New Orleans. With amateur-and-professional wrestling legend Danny Hodge as referee, André & Dusty defeated Stan Hansen & Ernie Ladd in the final round to win the titles. But when André was unable to make the first championship defense, he was replaced by Don “The Spoiler” Jardine, and the team quickly dropped the titles.

  HOWARD FINKEL: “He didn’t need a title. There are wrestlers here who need titles to really ascend to the top. Because of the novelty that André was, he didn’t need a championship belt around his waist.”

  3

  Those who knew him remember André as a man who didn’t see gray when it came to his relationships with other wrestlers— “Boss,” as he was known, either liked you or he didn’t, and heaven help those who were not in good favor. Among those who earned the Giant’s loathing was future Hall of Famer Ivan “Polish Power” Putski. Wrestling one night in Providence, Rhode Island, André teamed with Putski and a young Ted DiBiase in a Six Man Tag against the Valiant Brothers, Jimmy, Johnny, and Jerry.

  In the locker room, André explained to DiBiase how the match would go. “André was like, this guy doesn’t care about anybody else, he has no real respect for the business, and he’s a loser,” the Million Dollar Man remembered in his 2008 autobiography. “He said, ‘Hey, boss. Tonight, you tag me. You tag nobody else.’ I said, ‘Okay.’ Throughout the entire match, André made sure that I never tagged Putski. Brother, he made that guy stand on the apron all night. I’d go over there, Putski would reach out to tag me, and André would just throw that great big, long arm in front of me and take the tag. André had a way of proving his point.”

  HOWARD FINKEL: “If André didn’t like you, make no mistake about it, he would tell you. And if he didn’t like you, he didn’t want to be around you. At the same time, André was all business. And you don’t have to like somebody to do business with them.”

  JACK BRISCO: “With people he didn’t know, he enjoyed being a little intimidating. But to his friends, you couldn’t ask for a better friend or a nicer man. He was an amazing man. The people he didn’t like, they knew he didn’t like ’em.

  “The Iron Sheik, André didn’t like him for some reason. I don’t know why, but over the years I saw them wrestle several times, in different parts of the country, and André was just unmerciful on the Iron Sheik. He’d just beat the poor guy about half to death.”

  BLACKJACK LANZA: “If you were genuine, he liked you. If you were phony, he didn’t have time for you.”

  TED DIBIASE: “If André didn’t like you, he’d just flat-out tell you. He’d say, ‘Get out of the dressing room, go dress somewhere else. I don’t care where, just get out of here.’ There was no in-between with him. He’d keep his distance till he figured you out. I’ll tell you this about the man, you couldn’t get much by him. He had great intuition. No matter what you’d see on the exterior, André knew how to call a spade a spade.”

  VINCE McMAHON: “We had this guy by the name of Uncle Elmer in the company. Elmer was a big man, but not a giant. Almost seven feet tall, big potbelly, skinny little arms. Never trained a day in his life. Elmer sold fake Rolex watches to the boys and

  With Ivan Putski.

  to the public. He had his briefcase he’d carry around, he’d open that briefcase up and sell fake Rolexes.

  “Anyway, André didn’t like him. He’d been in the ring a couple times with André, and André roughed him up a little bit. So Elmer went to Bobby Heenan and said, ‘Bobby, I don’t think the Giant likes me.’

  “Bobby says, ‘Whatever makes you think that?’

  “‘He told me so.’ “

  In 1980 Vince Sr. paired off André with a bodybuilding newcomer who instantly became his big, blond bête noire.

  Inspired by Superstar Billy Graham and Dusty Rhodes, Hulk Hogan— born Terry Bollea—had learned his craft from famed wrestler/trainer Hiro Matsuda before entering the Championship Wrestling from Florida ring in 1977. He worked around the Southeast under such monikers as Terry Boulder and Sterling Golden, drawing well enough to earn a shot at the prestigious NWA World Heavyweight Championship.

  HULK HOGAN: “When I first got into the business, in my mind I thought I could get as big as André. I wasn’t stupid—I knew I could never be seven-foot-four. I just thought that in the wrestling business I could be so big, people would just believe everything. Like, even if you beat André, nobody would really believe it, he was so big.

  “So that was my goal, to be the biggest, strongest I could be and hopefully be more impressive than André. And along with that came my verbiage, and that was a direct threat to André.”

  In late 1979, Hogan was introduced to Vince McMahon Sr., who gave him his new nom de guerre and teamed him with manager “Classy” Freddie Blassie. The pairing instantly established Hogan as a heel to be reckoned with. A master of crowd antagonism and heel psychology, Blassie’s management style drew intense heat from the fans. He would assist Hogan by slipping a “foreign object” into the Hulkster’s elbow pad—in plain sight of the crowd, of course, though somehow not in view of his opponent or the referee.

  With Blassie waving his trademark cane by his side, Hogan marched through the World Wide Wrestling Federation’s babyface roster, defeating such stars as Tito Santana, Dominic DeNucci, Ivan Putski, and then-champion Bob Backlund.

  HULK HOGAN: “When I first came to New York, I was the bad guy. Fred Blassie was my manager, and ’cause I was 330 pounds, it was believable that I could give André a run for his money.”

  In March 1980 McMahon Sr. matched his rising new star with his greatest attraction. André took an immediate dislike to Hogan. Freddie Blassie, in his 2003 memoir Listen, You Pencil Neck Geeks, tells of a match between the Giant and Hulk Hogan where “André got it in his head that Hogan wasn’t hustling enough.

  “Trapping Hogan in a full nelson and clamping on the pressure, André growled in that deep distorted voice of his, ‘Work, Hulk, work.’”

  André’s antipathy to Hogan had no small effect on the junior wrestler’s nerves. The very thought of working a match with the Giant filled Hogan with virtually uncontrollable terror, causing him to get physically sick with fear as he approached the arena.

  HULK HOGAN: “There was some rough going between me and him. He’d get me in the ring and just tan my hide. I’d be on the way to the building knowing I had to wrestle him and I would pull the car over and vomit, I was so scared. Then after taking several beatings within an inch of my life, which I never thought I would survive, he finally gained respect for me.”

  On August 2, 1980, McMahon Sr. sent André and Hogan to wrestle for Bill Watts at one of his annual Mid-South SuperDome Extravaganzas in New Orleans. Watts booked Hogan to lose to one of his biggest names, the great Wahoo McDaniel, but the young Hulkster had been advised by McMahon not to lose his match so as to appear more of a threat to André in their bout later in the card.

  According to Hogan, Watts was infuriated by Hulk’s refusal to job to his champion. He proceeded to tell André not only how the younger wrestler wouldn’t job to McDaniel, he was also refusing to go down against the Giant—despite the fact that putting André over was his sole reasoning for opposing Watts.

  Nevertheless, André was not about to give this newcomer the benefit of the doubt. When the two finally stepped into the ring together, the Giant made plain his displeasure by “damn near killing” Hogan. “He messed up my shoul
der,” Hulk said, “screwed my neck up and suplexed me on my head.”

  The Giant’s open hostility toward Hogan persisted even as the two wrestlers ventured halfway around the world to work together in New Japan. Traveling the country together, André continued to torment the younger wrestler, sitting in the back of the bus so he could bounce his empty beer cans off the back of Hulk’s head.

  Rather than backing down, Hulk accepted his hazing as a rite of passage. He opted to show fealty to the biggest star in the business by taking the abuse with a grain of salt while also going out of his way to run errands and lend André a hand whenever possible.

  Despite the Giant’s antagonistic behavior, Hogan was able to see André’s discomfort in the world, how the adoration of millions was more than countered by the slings and arrows thrown at him by nonwrestling fans who would jeer and gawk and generally treat the Giant as no more than a freak of nature. Hulk grasped how the Giant, whose strength and size inspired awe in the audience and fear in his opponents, was in many ways quite powerless. This huge man was unable to enjoy such simple taken-for-granted amenities as a comfortable chair or a bed that would come close to fitting his massive frame.

  “I saw how hard it was for him to get around, big as he was,” Hogan recalls. “I just wanted to help him as much as I could.”

  Early one morning while wrestling together in Tokyo, Hogan learned that it was in fact André’s birthday. Thinking fast, he called a restaurateur friend and arranged for the purchase of a case of Pouilly-Fuissé, one of the Giant’s favorite French wines.

  Returning to the bus, he found André in his usual seat in the back. “Hey, where you been, boss?”

  All assembled sang “Happy Birthday” as Hogan presented the Giant with his gift. Though it was only 7:30 AM, André broke into the case and opened one of his dozen bottles of wine.