In 1998, Ritter was driving near Forest, Mississippi, on his way home from his daughter’s high school graduation. He apparently fell asleep at the wheel, and his car flipped three times, killing him. He was forty-five years old.
So what to make of JYD’s career now? It’s worth noting that many wrestling fans and commentators place JYD, in hindsight, on the crasser side of black wrestling history. Ladd, Rocky Johnson, Tony Atlas, and Ron Simmons (prior to his role in the Black Panther–esque Nation of Domination, one assumes) portrayed more straightforward wrestlers-who-happened-to-be-black. Certainly no one can ever overestimate the racial insensitivity of the wrestling promotional machine.
But whether you view JYD as a shirtless Stepin Fetchit or more of a muscle-bound Bert Williams is beside the point (although it’s significant that both are being granted subversive cachet through the revisionist lens). In pro wrestling, everyone is a stereotype of one kind or another. The sport may have been capitalizing on JYD’s Scary Negro juju, but it also made his foes so cartoonishly bigoted that even the most benighted sectors of wrestling’s audience could feel virtuous for hating them. Wrestling made it easy for its fans to be broad-minded. It’s cheap sentiment, maybe, but it’s sentiment all the same, and certainly not something one associates with minstrelsy. The Junkyard Dog was just jivin’ with our junk all along.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ROYALTY IN WRESTLING
On July 27, 1974, a young wrestler named Jerry Lawler defeated his mentor Jackie Fargo to claim the NWA Southern Junior Heavyweight Championship, which, presumably to increase the belt’s prestige, was then renamed the NWA Southern Heavyweight Championship (Memphis version)—not to be confused with the NWA Southern Heavyweight Championship that was the top belt in the Florida territory. (The title would again change its name in 1978 to the AWA Southern Heavyweight Championship.) But even though the title—which Lawler would hold on and off until it was merged with the AWA Championship in 1987—was the prize in that match, it wouldn’t prove to be as significant as the honorific attached to the win. By beating Fargo, the regional legend, Lawler could claim to be the “king” of wrestling in the area. And he did, with gusto. There were other “kings” in the Territorial Era—King Curtis Iaukea, the “King” Ernie Ladd—but Lawler’s reign was unquestionably the longest and most storied.
As the years went on, Lawler—never much for subtlety—would wear a kingly goatee, carry a crown, sometimes with a scepter and fur-trimmed robe, and decorate his tights with regal insignias. Lawler took his kingship seriously, going so far as to sue—in real life—the WWF over its use of the “King” moniker in 1987. (The lawsuit basically boiled down to an injunction against WWF using “The King” in promoting Memphis-area events. Lawler actually referenced the lawsuit in storylines but treated the specifics of the suit only vaguely, alleging that his court victory proved that he was the true king of wrestling, whatever that meant.)
The WWF king in question was one Harley Race, former NWA champion and longtime headliner of the NWA’s St. Louis outpost. When he came to the WWF in 1986, the promotion searched for some way to establish his pedigree with fans without acknowledging his NWA legacy. (As a rule, the WWF never mentioned its competitors on air until the Modern Era.) The WWF settled on having him win the second annual King of the Ring tournament and embrace the mantle wholeheartedly, dressing in full royal regalia and entering the ring to the strains of Mussorgsky’s “The Great Gate of Kiev.”
When Race was forced out of action after getting a hernia by colliding unfortunately with the announcers’ table during a match with Hulk Hogan, his manager, Bobby Heenan, was determined to anoint a new king, and he selected Haku, a Samoan ruffian. Haku, elevated by the crown and instilled with a newfound shamanic regality, eventually lost the crown to pro-American tough guy “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, who understandably treated the royal vestments as comedy props rather than affectations, before he himself lost the WWF kingship to “Macho Man” Randy Savage, who took the role more seriously, if not more literally; he modified his nickname to “Macho King” and paired a streamlined crown with his ever-present sunglasses for an iconic look of insane posturing. Savage took the mantle into (his first) retirement after WrestleMania VII.
Thereafter the WWF kingship was an incidental titular, used irregularly by King of the Ring winners in Harley Race fashion when it suited their (necessarily villainous) characters. Owen Hart became the maniacal “King of Harts.” Mabel—whose character up to that point was basically that of a threatening, electric-color-clothing-wearing, fat black man—became “King Mabel,” who was basically the same guy as before but with a crown. (His old partner Mo became “Sir Mo.”) Edge called himself “King Edge the Awesome,” Booker T did a mind-bendingly incredible turn as “King Booker,” and Sheamus shoehorned medieval-looking royal gear into his Irish character.
When Bret Hart won the 1993 King of the Ring, he didn’t take on any kingly affectations, but his kingship was challenged by a new WWF announcer—named Jerry “The King” Lawler. It’s good to be king, after all, so you might as well fight for it.
ANDRE THE GIANT
When Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant met in what is still considered the biggest wrestling match of all time, exaggeration was in the air. According to various contemporary reports, there were 95,000 people on hand at WrestleMania III to see the 7-foot-5, 525-pound Andre square off against Hulk Hogan, who stood 6-foot-8 and weighed 320 pounds and whose biceps measured twenty-four inches around. Probably the only number in that last sentence that’s unimpeachable is the III.
Pro wrestling is abundant with such embellishments (and misdirections, fabrications, and lies of omission), even within the sport’s Big Lie. But when Andre was involved, the mythologizing always hit fever pitch. It’s a testament to his outsize greatness that reality—as impressive as it was—couldn’t do him justice.
It should be said up front that every detail of Andre’s life is subject to fantastical reinterpretation and, failing that, normal human error. For every stated fact that follows, there is a contradictory fact somewhere out there.* “Truth” hereafter should be graded on a curve.
Born André René Roussimoff in 1946 at the foot of the French Alps, in a town called Grenoble, Andre was normal-sized at birth, but with adolescence came an incredible growth spurt. Details are hazy, of course, but various stories put him at 6 feet at the age of twelve, 6-foot-7 at the age of seventeen, and 7-foot-4 by nineteen. (There is much dispute over whether he ever actually reached 7-foot-4.) He had an affliction called acromegaly, a syndrome wherein the pituitary gland overproduces growth hormone.* One legend: When he made the long walk to school as a child, he would sometimes hitch a ride from his neighbor, Samuel Beckett. In his teen years, Andre worked on a farm, in a factory, and as a woodworker before he was discovered in his late teens (not by Lord Alfred Hayes, as one legend suggests, though Hayes did meet him early in his career) and introduced to the world of wrestling. He traveled widely almost from the start—throughout Europe, where he was known as “Monster Eiffel Tower”; into Japan, where he was dubbed “Monster Roussimoff”; and at home in France, where he was called the “Butcher” or simply “Giant Roussimoff.” Soon, though, he took on a new moniker: “Jean Ferré,” a play on the name of Géant Ferré, sort of a French Paul Bunyan. At a time when a wrestler’s name had to sell tickets, it was obvious almost from the start that mythology was the only means of adequate articulation of Andre’s presence.
Soon he was in Montreal, where he had been recruited by Canadian legend (and onetime disputed NWA champ) Edouard Carpentier, and where, under the tutelage of wrestler-promoter Frank Valois, he was first exposed to the rabid wrestling audiences of North America. Fans all over the continent began to hear whispers about this new monster, this “Eighth Wonder of the World.” This was, of course, after the heyday of P. T. Barnum’s sideshow exhibitions and before the modern era of the YouTube phenomenon. Likewise, Andre’s career peaked before the cable tel
evision era, before the world at large could keep tabs of his every match and movement. Andre’s first major feud (and first in a long, long line of giant vs. giant programs) was against Don Leo Jonathan, who supposedly stood 6-foot-9. Their feud electrified Canadian audiences. Even so, it would take a deliberate hand to ensure that crowds didn’t tire of Andre; the unbeatable monster is fun once, maybe twice, but it soon loses its luster. So Valois delivered Andre’s career to the only promoter he thought could manage such a legend in the making: Vincent J. McMahon, father of Vincent K. McMahon and paterfamilias of the WWF empire.
Vince Sr. took the reins of Andre’s career in 1973, and his first matter of business was to change “Jean Ferré” into something more straightforward but nevertheless something duly mesmerizing: Andre the Giant. Although McMahon’s territory encompassed only the Northeast, he knew that keeping Andre on the move was the only way to keep him fresh. For the next ten years, Andre stayed on the road, lumbering from territory to territory, as McMahon rented him out as a special attraction to promoters across the United States and the world. Andre would almost always play the good guy, coming to the rescue of the area’s top hero when the heels began to outnumber and overpower him. This young Andre, before age and size starting wearing him down, was an incredible athlete and a pure spectacle in the ring. He was billed as being undefeated, which was presumably untrue but functionally valid; he may have never lost a straight singles match to pinfall or submission during this period. He didn’t need to, though—he would elevate his opponents in the audience’s eyes just by letting them get in a few good minutes against the Giant.
As Jerry “The King” Lawler, one of the many local heroes to get the rub from Andre, put it to Krugman: “He’d let you do anything you wanted in a match. Other than beat him. . . . But if he didn’t like you, he’d make you look like crap, and there wasn’t anything anyone could do about it.” This became a pattern in Andre’s career, the willingness to make his opponent look good, unless he personally disliked the guy. The explanations for this are assorted—that Andre was protective of his place on top of the food chain, that Andre respected the tradition of wrestling and detested anyone who didn’t—but Andre’s temperament reminds one of the old tales of the angry and unpredictable Greek gods. And if you were one of the unlucky few whom Andre decided to smite, well, God help you.
By this time, Andre was undeniably a megastar. In 1974, The Guinness Book of World Records named him the highest paid professional wrestler, with a one-year take of $400,000. The Washington Redskins considered offering him a tryout—which, even viewed as a publicity stunt, shows the degree of Andre’s celebrity. He appeared (in costume) on The Six Million Dollar Man, playing a dastardly Sasquatch. In 1976, on the night that Muhammad Ali fought Japanese pro wrestler Antonio Inoki in a terribly ill-conceived interdisciplinary match, Andre fought ham-and-egger Chuck Wepner (the inspiration for the Rocky movies) in Shea Stadium. The match was unscripted, which was less a novelty with Andre than it would have been with any other wrestler. This was Andre’s whole mythos, after all; every match is scripted only because Andre deigns to follow the script, only competitive by the Giant’s godly grace.
In the pro wrestling world, he was feuding notably against another big man, footballer-slash-wrestler the “Big Cat” Ernie Ladd, and he won the NWA tri-state tag team titles with Dusty Rhodes as his partner. For a star of his wattage, Andre held very few titles over the course of his career. Partly this was because he moved through territories so frequently (in fact, he vacated two tag team title reigns simply by never being there to defend the championship), and partly it was because he was a “division killer”—once he won a belt, he had no credible opponents. But the truth of the matter is at once more subtle and more obvious: As famed WWF ring announcer Howard Finkel succinctly put it, “André didn’t need a title.” In pro wrestling, wearing the title belt is sometimes less an indicator of your popularity than it is an instrument to earn you as much popularity as possible. Andre was such an attraction that there was nothing a championship belt could add to that. If anything, wrapping that gigantic waist in a belt would bring him down to the plane of mortals.
In 1980, Andre first faced an up-and-comer named Hulk Hogan. This was Hogan’s first WWF run, and he was then playing a villain—he came to the ring flexing in a metallic cape and headband accompanied by his manager “Classy” Freddie Blassie—but he already had visions of superstardom. Andre looked at Hogan and saw a presumptive bodybuilder more interested in fame than in wrestling, and in their first matches, he took it out on Hogan in the ring. But after the two men toured Japan together and Hogan had shown sufficient deference to the Giant, acting as his personal barback and even offering up a case of fine French wine in fealty to Andre on his birthday, the men reached a sort of détente. And in mid-1980, when the two did battle at the Philly Spectrum and later at Shea, Andre won both matches but gave Hogan the gift of a disqualification ending in the former bout and a postmatch bloodying in the latter. The degree to which this established Hogan’s career can’t be easily quantified, but the effect was profound. When Andre broke his ankle getting out of bed the next year—it was sold to wrestling fans as the result of a diabolical attack by Killer Khan—a newly ascendant Vince McMahon rehired Hogan and elevated him to the role of top star in the new world of the WWF.
Vince had Andre under contract, and he let him continue to wrestle in Japan but not for any other American promoter. Andre agreed to this deal out of respect for his history with Vince Sr. and acknowledgment of Vince Jr.’s vision, but he wasn’t entirely happy about it. Andre loved touring the United States, loved being hailed as the conquering hero in each successive town, loved overindulging with his cohorts at the bars around the country. The WWF would make him a bigger star, but would one stage be big enough for an icon the size of the Giant?
The question would be put to the test in short order. In his first WWF storyline, Andre took on Big John Studd in a series of bodyslam challenge matches. Studd—a goliath in his own right at 6-foot-10 (or, in real-world terms, 6-foot-6) and 360 pounds—managed first by Blassie and later by Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, offered $10,000 to anyone in the WWF who could slam him, but when Andre took him up on the offer, Studd’s arrogance quickly turned to cowardice. The feud, which started in early 1983 and continued improbably until WrestleMania I in 1985, ended in one of the early WWF’s seminal moments, when Andre slammed Studd, took claim of the bag containing the prize money (now a whopping $15,000), and proceeded to toss handfuls of cash into the crowd.
If one were to posit that Andre was the first sports star to “make it rain,” one would probably be correct. If one were to use the meteorological reference to draw another parallel to the Greek gods, one would probably be stretching the metaphor too far. Nonetheless, 1984 had seen Andre actually play the role of another ancient god: Dagoth, the horned fiend in Conan the Destroyer. (The part was uncredited.) As in The Six Million Dollar Man, Andre was heavily costumed, but his immensity was irreplaceable. Before CGI, there was only Andre.
In WrestleMania 2, Andre competed in a twenty-man battle royal that included, among others, William “The Refrigerator” Perry. (Perry got into a scuffle with Big John Studd in the match.) But soon Andre’s health was in a state of serious decline, and he was written off WWF television under the guise of a suspension nefariously engineered by Bobby Heenan. During his off-time, Andre returned to work in Japan, and then repaired again to Hollywood, where he appeared (finally without makeup) as Fezzik, the roguish but lovable ogre in The Princess Bride.
Andre was notoriously proud of the movie and insisted on watching it over and over again with his fellow wrestlers in the years that followed. Andre also found fame with a younger generation around this time in the Saturday morning cartoon Hulk Hogan’s Rock ’n’ Wrestling as an oafish, sport-coat-wearing animated sidekick, and as a comic prop in the live-action bumper segments.
Andre’s fame was, almost inconceiv
ably, growing. And the WWF’s star continued to rise as well. As WrestleMania III approached, Vince was determined to have the biggest story in wrestling history at the center of the card. He approached Andre about playing the bad guy—which he had done with some frequency in Japan but never in America—in a main event program against his on-screen buddy Hulk Hogan. Andre was intrigued, but he was in too much pain after years of the torment of acromegaly, the hard hits in the wrestling ring, the steady torture of undersized beds and cars, and his famously self-destructive lifestyle.
The legend of Andre the Giant’s drinking almost overshadows his wrestling triumphs. There are numerous stories of his drinking feats: 119 beers in one sitting, 156 beers in one sitting, a case of wine on a four-hour bus ride, a $40,000 bar tab while filming The Princess Bride, an average of 7,000 calories of alcohol intake a day. (A cursory Google search will show you that the Internet is more interested in incidences of Andre’s drinking prowess than in details about his career.)
When Andre told Vince that he was in no condition to wrestle, Vince offered to pay for whatever surgery he needed and to help him rehabilitate in the McMahon family home. Andre accepted. Legend has it that the anesthesiologist responsible for putting him under for back surgery had never before had a giant for a patient and was forced to use his alcoholic consumption as a guide for his dosage. (“It usually takes two liters of vodka just to make me feel warm inside,” Andre purportedly quipped at the time.) The formula created for Andre is (supposedly) still used today.
The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling Page 14