During the latest edition of his “ARN” podcast, Arn Anderson commented on working with Andre the Giant, Andre’s ability to drink insane amounts, and more. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On Andre being the only “giant” in wrestling: “He was a real giant in every sense of the word. There’s been some tall guys in the business. Big Show, I never considered as — you know, being a giant means that your head was the size of the Liberty Bell and your ass was four feet wide. You were just so big and so out of proportion for any normal human being, truly was like a mythical giant. And there was only one of those, and that was Andre.”
On working with Andre in the ring: “I wrestled him twice, and it was in Pensacola, and it was a handicap match both nights. It was Jerry Stubbs and myself. And at that point in time, Andre’s back was not as bad as it was later on. Probably 10 years later, his back was just shot. When I was up there working for WWF, it was — his back was really terrible. But at this point, he was still pretty mobile. And you know, you would just wait for him to either call you into a hallway or not. Normally he would not, there would be no conversation about anything other than the referee would say, ‘Andre’s gonna knock you both down, stack you up, sit on you and that’s the finish.’ And that’s the way it went down. And he would let you know if you were trying to get some heat on him in a working way and all this stuff, the two of you. He would just reach out there and give you about a half-ass chop. Nothing meant to hurt you, nothing meant to cripple you. He could have if he would have wanted to, but he was just letting you know, ‘Hey, I’m a giant. I am THE giant, you’re a regular mortal. Doesn’t matter that it’s two of you, we’re gonna do what I want to do, period.’ And you would just kinda follow along, and he would bounce you around until he felt it was time to finish it. And he didn’t go off his feet, he didn’t come close to going off his feet, and that was just fine with me. I just wanted to get out of there with my life. But he always treated me, every time I was in the room with him, with nothing but respect and in the ring, he was a giant. It was breathtaking what he would let you know what he could do if he wanted to.”
On Andre’s drinking: “We [Tully and Arn] would go drink with Andre a few nights. And buddy, he would buy several rounds. But a round to him was — you know, he would look at what you were drinking, he would get you like, if it was two or three of us together, he would order a platter of beers. And he would sit one platter of beers there, he would get a bucket of ice and put maybe six beers in it. And he would have his all sitting there, maybe as many as 20 beers on a platter. And he would just start knocking them out. I know he drank 20 bottles of wine or something one night. Just like everything else, Andre was on a whole other level. But he never changed. He would sit there and drink and you know, he would look around. And hopefully he was smiling. If he was smiling, everybody else was smiling, and everybody would bring him over drinks and stuff. And he would accept the ones — this is what I thought was so cool. He would accept the drinks from the guys that he liked. But when the fans would come over, thinking they could just buy him a drink, they could just hang out. At that point in time, he would look at them and say, ‘No thank you.’ And that was it. Everybody got it, everybody understood. He wasn’t just gonna be in there to meander around and just be life of the party. He was kind of doing his own thing, he was respectful to everybody. But man, could he put it away.”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
