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Who Was Andre The Giant? · Dirt Nap City - History's Most Interesting Dead People

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everyone, and welcome to Dirt Knap City, the show about interesting people who happen to be dead.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: Today is episode one, season one, the very first thing.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, prima, hopefully, hopefully not finale, but definitely we are excited to be here today.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've got my buddy Alex, the co-host, who is here with us, and we are going to talk about somebody really interesting.
• 0:21
  SPEAKER_01: Are you excited, Alex?
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: I am excited, and I'm picturing people that have already listened to all 200 of the first episodes going back and listening to this and how we got started and how similar it is to our 200th episode.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: We don't even know what our plan is for this yet, but we're hoping it's something you enjoy as an audience and you subscribe to.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_01: So if you uh do subscribe to this on whatever podcast platform you're using, we will be eternally grateful and we'll remember the early subscribers.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: I think the first people that we pick are going to be the most important people in the world, right?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: And then we just go like it's a hierarchy.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: We just move down.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: We're working our way down certain people.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: So someday we may get to y'all, whoever's listening to this.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: We may get to you.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, when they're dead.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: No, they won't be listening because they'll be dead because you have to be dead to be uh uh on the subject.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but get in on the waiting list now.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: It could go on your tombstone, featured on Dirt Knap City.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or your resume.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: The format of this show is we pick a famous dead person uh and we talk about them.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: And honestly, we're not trying to reinvent the wheel here.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: All this stuff is available online, but we've done the research for you.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: So if there's somebody you saw in the title and you were interested in that person, you hey, I've heard of that person, I want to know more, you can listen to this podcast and learn a bit more and then decide if you want to go deep on them somewhere else.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: So instead of taking two or three minutes to look on Wikipedia, they could spend an hour listening to us.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: If you're driving from uh Texas to New York or California to wherever, you've got plenty of time.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you don't, it's hands-free.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Hands-free Wikipedia.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: You're mowing the lawn with your noise-canceling headphones.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: That's another let's let's name some of the applications for Dirt Knap City.
• 2:10
  SPEAKER_01: Mowing the lawn, driving.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um, let's see.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably working out.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Probably great for working out.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: This would get you pumped, right?
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, if if we were to do somebody that was like a heavy metal person, for example, that'd be great to work out with.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_01: So today's the very first person on Dirt Knap City.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it has to be somebody who's dead, somebody who's interesting.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_01: And those are really the main two criteria, and hopefully somebody that most people have heard of, because I think if we go too obscure, we're not going to get as many uh downloads and listens.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_01: So I tried to pick somebody for this um inaugural one, somebody very uh well known, at least as a name, but probably not somebody that you know a lot of details about.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: You just know a few things about this person, found them interesting.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_01: So the way we're gonna start each show is um one of us knows who the topic is, one of us knows who the person is we're talking about, and one of us doesn't.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: For episode one, it was uh decided through a random drawing that it would be someone I selected as a topic, and Alex does not know who the person is yet.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_01: Now he has heard of this person, I'm sure of that.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so we'll start by me giving you, giving Alex the clues that I think will let him figure out who it is.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: So, Alex, um, my your first clue, this person was an athlete first and an actor second.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want me to guess?
• 3:44
  unknown: No, no.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: Do you have any ideas?
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Does anybody pop into your head?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, sure.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: A bunch of people come into my uh come into my head.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Give us one uh head.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh like uh Jim Brown.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Jim Brown.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: Did you ever see the movie Ice Station Zebra?
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, but it sounds awesome.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: It is awesome.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: He was he was like the rock before the rock.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: He okay, he was a great football player, and then he quit early in his uh well.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: I guess we're now we're doing an episode on Jim Brown.
• 4:12
  unknown: Right, right.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here we go.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: I've just hijacked your episode.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, okay.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I didn't know anything about him.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: So give me like a second.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Uh and then he was some really in some really uh not uh well-known action movies, but I've probably seen them all.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: Is is he downtown Jim Brown?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is that the one?
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I think you're thinking of downtown Julie Brown.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: The VJ from from nothing.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: Nothing, nothing like.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh all right.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, back to the uh topic for today.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: Actor first, or sorry, athlete first, actor second.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right, right, right.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh he died before the age of 50.
• 4:52
  SPEAKER_01: He's fairly contemporary.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um he died in the 1990s.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And he was born in France, but moved to North Carolina later in life.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: Would I know that this that he was born in France?
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like is that common knowledge?
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_01: You you would know he wasn't born in the U.S.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_01: He did have an accent, a pretty famous accent.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: French athlete became an actor.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Would I know that he was an athlete, or is that oh yeah, yeah.
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 100%.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's one of the most famous in his uh in his chosen athletic profession.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's not basketball.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you that hint.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's also not lacrosse.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: It's not ultimate frisbee.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Not hockey.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_01: French.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: French became an actor.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, and I'll give you I'll give you the biggest clue of all.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And the last clue.
• 5:59
  SPEAKER_01: He often feuded with others in his profession.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Was kind of famous for those feuds.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And let me even throw this on top of that the cherry on top of the whipped cream.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: He was not only famous for those feuds, but the um the profession that he was in, the athletic profession he was in, was famous for feuds in general.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's sort of the whole point of the profession.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_00: Um I hope you're not gonna get me on a wrestling thing.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_00: Is this a wrestler?
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know a lot about wrestling.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_01: Who had an accent like this?
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: I have no idea, man.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're gonna tell me somebody I've never heard of.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: All right, well, let's talk about let's talk about the 1980s in Houston.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, did you ever watch Mid South Wrestling?
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't?
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh man.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: So you you my sister.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't get to Houston until 1985.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, well, that's still the 80s.
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: It was still big.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah Junkyard Dog, Kamala, the Ugandan Warrior, Jake the Snake Roberts, King Kong Bundy, Fritz Von Erich.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, all the Von Erich brothers, you don't remember any of this?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_01: Rock and Roll Express.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: All right, just the most famous wrestler you can think of.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Probably um Hulk Hogan.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Second most famous wrestler you can think of.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is what we're doing now.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean, junkyard dog.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: I remember a guy.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's my opinion.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: He's not even close to the second most famous wrestler.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_01: No, I don't really know a lot of wrestling.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: You ready?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: You'll you'll as soon as I say this, you're gonna be like, oh yeah.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_01: You ready?
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: Andre the Giant.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I didn't know he was French, I thought he was Turkish.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, interestingly enough, he was born in in uh Coulmir's, France, and that Coulomirs is also the name of a cheese from that region.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: You ever heard of Coulomir's cheese?
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's a soft, ripened, uncooked cheese made from cow's milk composed of 45 to 50 percent fat.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, now I do know Andre the Giant, though.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: I will tell you that I do know who Andre the Giant is.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_01: Now that I've said it, it's a little bit more of an aha, huh?
• 8:28
  SPEAKER_01: I saw Princess Bride.
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I did the accent perfectly, right?
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_01: I wish I could think of a line from the movie.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we must say Bata Cop.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_01: He didn't talk a lot in that movie, did he?
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: No, he didn't.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so he was born in 1946 in France, and uh his father was Bulgarian and his mother was Polish.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe that's where you're getting the the non-French accent.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_01: But he did he did live in France, was born there, and he actually was uh seven foot four at his tallest uh in his prime and 520 pounds, and he suffered from gigantism because his pituitary gland had too much growth hormone.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: So, you know You know what's interesting about tall people that I've always thought.
• 9:17
  SPEAKER_00: What's that?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: And you're a you know, you're taller than me.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't call you a tall man, but I wouldn't call you a short man.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I mean you're a tall guy.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: What are you what are you about six six one?
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: Six one, yeah.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's about right.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're not being generous there?
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, if you ask my mom, I'm six three.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_01: If you ask my wife, I'm five'9, so you know.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I'm yeah, I'm about uh yeah, I'm about uh shorter than that.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I've always thought it was interesting that tall people have based so if you're seven foot four, you've been every single height that you could possibly be.
• 9:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can't skip any, right?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: So he Andre the Giant at some point was five nine, five seven, six one, six two.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, maybe some of those in the same day.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: Now, now I think at at uh at age 13, he was like 6'4 and and weighed 225 pounds or something.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, he he grew quickly.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: He he was uh sometimes known as the eighth wonder of the world.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's a lot of things that get called that.
• 10:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um he left school at age 13 to work on a farm, and then at 17 he moved to Paris and became a furniture mover, and at nights he trained to become a professional wrestler.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: So he did live in Paris for a good good chunk of his life.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: What a great job for somebody that basically.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean imagine if if he showed up to move your furniture, you'd be pretty psyched, right?
• 10:46
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, okay, this is gonna get done.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: If furniture moving paid as well as professional wrestling, he would have been the best ever.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: He might have been he might have been the best ever at that time, right?
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_01: The best furniture mover in Paris in you know at that year.
• 11:02
  SPEAKER_01: But but ultimately, uh he decided to become a professional wrestler, and by the time he was 20, he was wrestling all over Europe and Africa.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably not televised wrestling, right?
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's like Yard Wall and Circus, basically, right?
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_01: Live live wrestling.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of what you know, think about vaudeville.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: That was kind of a French thing, I think, lot later, more than it was in the US.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_01: It lasted longer.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_01: Vaudeville-style shows, tent-style shows.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: But at 22 I would think he'd be wrestling like animals and things if it was like a circus.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, who I mean, you know, I mean, we here we would have him wrestling alligators and bears.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, here here 20 years ago, yes.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I don't know if that would fly these days.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm talking about back then.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'll I'll tell you an interesting fact about the WWF, right?
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know what that stands for?
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_01: Uh World Wildlife Fund.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so, funny enough, um, you you just kind of uh hit the nail on the head.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: WWF had to change their name from World Wrestling Federation to World Wrestling Entertainment because of the World Wildlife Fund.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_01: That's exactly right.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is that because is that because they were there first?
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_01: World Wild Wildlife Fund was there and had the copyright on the name.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_01: So so that was a um what what year?
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_01: I actually have a note in here about what year that happened.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing people weren't getting them confused, though.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_00: Like they could have stayed separate and nobody.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I mean, if somebody asked you to donate to the WWF, you know, you you you could get confused and write it write a check.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, or what if what if you didn't know they got the WWF and World Wrestling Federation cashed it, but it was supposed to be a donation to World Wildlife Fund.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know that's how they got their money through donations.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's how that's that's that's exactly right.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're not supposed to, and that's why they had the lawsuit.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: But all of that said, 24, he became a major attraction in Japan, and that's also the year he was 24 years old when he found out he had a brain tumor, uh, and that you know, this this pituitary issue and hormonal issue was was causing his gigantism, and that he actually could have an operation on it at 24 that doctors said you know it could be operated on, but it actually might end his athletic career.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's a chance of that.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: So you know what he chose?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: He chose to be an actor?
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_01: No, he chose to not have the operation and to keep going.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: He said they they basically told him you can have this operation and you may not be able to wrestle any further, or you can not have it and you'll live a shorter life.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And he said, I'm gonna not have it and live a shorter life.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: So you're saying if he could have had the operation, he may still be with us today.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: And we wouldn't be talking about him because he wouldn't be eligible to still be moving furniture.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: But would he still be seven foot four?
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he was I don't know.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_01: That's a good question.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, he probably wasn't seven four yet, right?
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_01: Well, he was 24 years old.
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: So but but you're right.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think people with this condition continue to grow their entire life, they don't stop, and that's probably um that's probably I don't know if he would have been taller.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, there's a point at which you start shrinking, right?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: You you grow and then you start shrinking, but I don't think it's 24.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: I think you're still growing at that point.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think he chose that option because he was afraid of surgery or because he uh well I think he was already seeing success as a wrestler, and they told him that having the surgery could impair his ability to wrestle.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I mean it's it's uh something that is you're working on somebody's brain, and so there's a potential you could get paralyzed.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's a lot of things that could happen, but it's kind of one of these things where if you're willing to take the chance, it could save you from dying early.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: But he said, No, I'm gonna keep going the way I am.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think you would have done in that situation?
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know, man.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because at 27, he was making four hundred thousand dollars a year.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, and in night that was 1974.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, he's living the life.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: You don't when you're that age, you don't really look at yourself at 50 or 60 years old, right?
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's uh And he did live another 20 years, so it wasn't like he died right away.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: He died, yeah, he died when he was uh 46.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: So he died in 1993, January 28th.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um about 20 years from when they told him that.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh 22.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Even if they told him it would be 20 years, he might have chosen that option.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, 20 years seems like a long time when you're 20 years old, right?
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: But he ultimately um changed his name in um 20 when he was 27.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was told that he should change his name to Andre the Giant.
• 15:54
  SPEAKER_01: And that he wasn't known as Andre the Giant until until he turned 27, and that's really when he became famous.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_01: As a matter of fact, in 1974, the Guinness Book of World Records listed him as the highest paid wrestling wrestler at$400,000 a year.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: And then at 30, things really took off when he did a exhibition match before a Muhammad Ali fight.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, so uh there was a exhibition match that they wrestling match that they put on before a Muhammad Ali boxing match.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: It was Muhammad Ali and Antonio Anoki.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know who that is.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_01: I don't pay much attention to boxing, but what it was, it was a boxer versus wrestler match that they did as a warm-up before the real boxing match.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: And he ended up throwing Chuck Webner, who was a boxer.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: I actually know about Chuck Webner.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was the Bayown bleeder, and he was the guy that they based Rocky on.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 16:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well he's Sylvester Stallone into the audience by Andre the Giant.
• 16:53
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you remember in Rocky four.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: When he fights Dolph Lundgren?
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_00: No, uh at the beginning, he fights um Hulk Hogan in a boxer versus wrestler exhibition match.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: Hulk Hogan, Hulk Hogan like throws him out of the ring.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: I do remember that.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: So that was maybe based on uh on on this story.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_01: That would have been that was it said it was he was 30, so uh 1974.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't I don't know what year that was, like it which came out first, but I would imagine that that probably happened before the movie.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: This was yeah, because Rocky, the Rocky one came out in like the mid-80s.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and and so speaking of uh Hulk Hogan, that was actually uh one of the staged feuds that he had.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: He he uh was supposed to be uh enemy of Hulk Hogan.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he was because Hulk Hogan ultimately delivered his eulogy at his funeral.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he and he and Hulk Hogan had these life and death feuds, and but the wrestlers, the organizers, actually told Hulk Hogan that they he had to be careful because at the time um Andre the Giant was actually starting to show signs of his I think it's called acromagaly, acromagaly, which is the disease that you know the pituitary gland disease, and he had brittle joints, brittle bones.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so Hulk Hogan, while they had these life and death things, they were aware that they didn't want to actually hurt Andre.
• 18:30
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh, you know, he had another feud besides Hulk Hogan with um a guy named Killer Khan, who was the Mongolian giant, and actually um it was supposed that uh according to the wrestling lore, Killer Khan actually broke Hulkan's ankle.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_01: But the truth is that he had actually had weak ankles because of his disease, and he had broken it that morning getting out of bed.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: It had act he had actually just stepped on it wrong and broken it.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so uh so but they they wrote it into the story and made it part of the wrestling match that uh Killer Khan broke his ankle.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Now, none of this was part of Big South wrestling.
• 19:09
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, this was all Mid South WWE at the time.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: So when you were watching Houston Mid South.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm gonna go back to Houston Mid-South wrestling because my impression is this is like minor league, small time.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no, no.
• 19:24
  SPEAKER_01: Andre the Giant actually did wrestle on Houston Mid South.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Really?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so so Houston Med Mid South, if you Google it sometime, it was one of the most popular wrestling programs on television.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: It got syndicated nationwide.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was on um do you well, I don't know if you remember your television stations in Houston.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was on it was on UHF.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_01: It wasn't on VHF, it was on it was on Channel 39?
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: 26 or 39.
• 19:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was one of those two.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: We had we had 26 and 39.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_01: I think it may have been 39.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: 39 was like bottom of the barrel stuff.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: But it was um still is.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: It was um, you know, it was sponsored by JW Marks Jewelers.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Do you remember that guy?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_01: He would yeah, he would wear a really pretty earring on his ear and he'd say, If if this earring can make my ear look good, it can make your imagine what it can do for your wife or something like that.
• 20:11
  SPEAKER_01: IW Marks.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_01: IW Marks, thank you.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Wow, there you go.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_01: So you you know what I'm talking about.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: You this is great for all the Houstonians listening to this right now.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: But um, but uh if you're not from Houston, uh Google that.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um he also had a feud with a guy named Big John Stud, who was 6'10, 364 pounds, and he called himself the true giant of wrestling.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Like a direct a direct uh insult to Andre.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Shot, yeah.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I like that name.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: Big John the Stud.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: Big John the Stud.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, Big John Stud, not the stud.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: Just stud was his last name.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Study.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_00: Big John The Stud was probably already taken.
• 20:50
  unknown: Right, right.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was looking for the dot com and dot net.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_01: So uh he actually offered$15,000 in cash to any wrestler who could body slam him into the mat.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: And guess who ended up doing it?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Our friend Andre.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: Andre the Giant body slammed uh stud so hard in 1983 that the entire ring actually collapsed.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, is that what oh man?
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: They they also fought in a steel cage, and uh Andre the Giant jumped from the rope, uh, I guess in the steel cage and knocked stud out cold.
• 21:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then uh Stud did get even in a tag team match where he and his partner, Ken Patera, knocked out Andre and cut off his hair.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: I think generally physical challenges when you dare somebody to do something.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I only know a couple of instances, Harry Houdini being the biggest don't always go well.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: No.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_00: True.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_00: There's always gonna be somebody that's gonna take you up on that that can probably do it.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: In nineteen eighty five, he slammed stud, got the fifteen thousand dollars right there in the ring, and ended up throwing it out into the crowd.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Throwing the money.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Making it rain.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_01: Making it rain.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: He was he was uh Was that the first first time anyone ever did that?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: I think he grabbed the mic and started rapping too.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: So he was he was so they just had the suitcase of money there.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: Of course.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: So that's suspicious to me.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well that that was that was wrestling at the time.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe, maybe, you know, maybe that's how um Big John Stud ended up like having his credibility was he would show the money, you know.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, if you want this, you gotta body slam me.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_00: I wouldn't have taken him up on that, probably.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think you know, Big John Stud was 6'10, 364.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think he would have had much chance.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_00: But it was it all comers, or would you have to like make an appointment and then he would I think it was I mean, like would he just set it up and say, all right, anybody can come in to the ring, and then at that time Andre John just happened to be sitting there.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was for any upcoming matches that he had.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like if if I think it was with another professional wrestler, right?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_01: That was probably a qualification.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Although there probably were some walk-ons, right?
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_01: There might have been some folks that were able to just walk on and do it.
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I don't think that was the case.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was basically, hey, if any of my opponents can do this, I'm gonna pay them the 15,000.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember at that, what was this 80s, right?
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: The early 80s?
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_01: This was uh 1985 when when he collected the money.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: Do you remember like in the late 70s, early 80s, the tough man competitions?
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, Mr.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: T was in one of those.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: Those were really popular, and they would like go to places like the Astrodome and just like have regular dudes beating the crap out of each other, and people would go and watch.
• 23:41
  SPEAKER_00: That was a thing.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was almost the forerunner to like MMA and some of the stuff now.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, but yeah, those so I could see a competition like that where you just did have all comers and somebody would say, I'll take I'll body slam you.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's like it's like an old-timey thing where somebody's standing on the corner and do I have any takers?
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I think it would be fun to watch people unsuccessfully try to body slam somebody.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: I think that would be actually more fun than watching them actually do it.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_01: Well, well, of course, you gotta understand that this was during a match, and so you know, I think that John was probably Big John was probably fighting back versus just like I'm just gonna stand there and let you try to do it, you know.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I pictured.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, okay.
• 24:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that would have been better.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:29
  SPEAKER_00: Just stand there and then you come into the ring and body slam me, and I'll give you what was it, fifteen thousand?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 24:36
  SPEAKER_00: It sounds kind of cheap now that I think about it.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_01: This was this was eight, I mean, eighty-five, fifteen thousand was probably like a hundred and fifty thousand today.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_00: I still think that sounds kind of cheap.
• 24:47
  SPEAKER_01: You you could buy a house in in uh you could probably buy a house in Houston for fifteen thousand and eighty-five.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, maybe.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: It just sounds like you're it's the risk reward I'm calculating in my head is not worth it.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_01: Your hospital bills, right, would probably be more than that.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: You'd have to have really good insurance.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_00: So that was 1985.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_00: Princess Bride came out before that, didn't it?
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it came out in '87.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: And and uh, so actually, that's a good transition.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Um, so Andre was the one-time World Wrestling Federation heavyweight champion, and uh the one time he was also a tag team champion.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 1993, um he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if that was uh what is it called, posthumously um or if that was it must have been because he died in January of '93.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, unless it happened like right before he died.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um ironically, too, he died in France.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: He was uh actually attending his father's funeral in France when he died.
• 25:56
  SPEAKER_01: Didn't come back.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: But he did, I I mentioned this in the beginning.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_01: He did move to he did actually own a ranch in North Carolina.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_00: That's what threw me off.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that clue threw me off.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: I should have just I should have just said France.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_01: But um, well, so let's talk about his acting career here, real quick.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: So he actually has 73 acting credits on IMDB.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I can think of two.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's what I was gonna say is most of these were uh television shows and films about wrestling.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I'll give you some some examples.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Rowdy Roddy Piper's Greatest Hits.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_01: He was in that.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_01: He was in WWF's Most Unusual Matches.
• 26:35
  SPEAKER_01: He was as himself.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: He was himself in a lot of these wrestlings, bloopers, bleeps, and body slams.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_01: These all came out in the 80s.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but but, you know, as as you said, um, here's some that you might not have known that he was a guest star in television series that you'll remember from the 80s.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: The greatest American hero.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, believe it or not.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: He was he was in that.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: He was in the fall guy.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_01: I could almost predict the what you're gonna say.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_01: All right.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to get I have two more?
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: You want to say the next two?
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: Was he in the six million dollar man?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know who wait wait?
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: Do you know who he played in the six million dollar man?
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing it was like um it's not you're never gonna guess.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: It was like Jerry the Giant or something.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: It was probably something similar.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: He played Bigfoot.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: He played Bigfoot.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, oh, I actually I didn't know that he played him, but I remember that episode.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, completely remember that episode.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's it.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: Steve Austin versus Bigfoot.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that was I embarrassed to say I've seen that relatively recently on YouTube.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: Like within the last five years.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: Were you were you were you on UHF TV?
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: Man, I get down such rabbit holes, and next thing you know, I'm watching Steve Austin fighting Bigfoot.
• 27:52
  SPEAKER_00: Six million dollar man.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing then he wasn't in Bionic Woman.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: A man that's barely alive.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_01: He was not, no.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'll give you I'll give you a hint.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: The last one I have listed here, and that was the only other actually TV popular TV series I could find.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, it has alliteration and it featured a monkey.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: A BJ and the Bear?
• 28:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: It was in an episode of BJ and the Bear.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_01: Who did he play in that?
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, I don't know.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't I didn't uh I actually didn't uh put down who he played it because the Bigfoot was the most interesting one.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah remember the theme to that?
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: BJ McKay and his bestfoot Bear.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: I think that song was like in the like a a hit.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like it was in like a top 40 hit, yeah.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, no, no, the one that was actually a top 40 hit was the the theme to the greatest American hero.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_01: Sure, sure.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, sure.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_01: That was Look at Me Now.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh what was it?
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_01: Believe it or not, I'm walking on air.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: I never thought I could feel so free.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: He he.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And do we have to pay copyright for this now?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: Flying away?
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_01: No, because it sounds nothing like the song.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_01: I'm way off pitch.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: As long as you're off pitch.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know, that's the way you get around is you actually just speed up the pitch a little bit or slow it down a little bit, and then it fools all the algorithms, all the copyright bots.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: Interesting.
• 29:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's like the ultimate uh uh capture.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Was he in a movie with Billy Crystal?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Andre the Giant?
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_01: That man, you're making me feel like I didn't do my research here.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Let's no, I was I I might be thinking of uh George Murison, the uh the basketball player who was actually Turkish, who was around the same.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean he might even be.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: Oh no, he was.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: He was.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was in a movie called My Giant.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_01: My Giant.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_00: Was that Andre the Giant?
• 29:43
  SPEAKER_00: Uh was in that?
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or was that George Murrison?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_01: Wait, let's see here.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it says it came out after he died.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So uh George George Murrison, yeah.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_00: No, well done.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: That's why I got him mixed up.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: So the movie was called My Giant.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it wasn't Bill, it wasn't Billy Chris, or it wasn't uh Andre the Giant.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't My Dinner with My Dinner with Andre wasn't My Dinner with Andre the Giant.
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_01: That would be a that would actually be a really cool movie.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably been done, but you know, just have dinner with him and film it.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_00: I would love to have dinner with somebody that big.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: I heard a story, I heard a story.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Just whole chickens, two bites.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I heard a story that he would drink like 10 beers at a time, you know, just just uh because they were you know they were tiny and he's European, right?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: So so yeah, those are his television shows.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: But of course, as you said, he was best remembered from his film role as Fezzick the Giant on The Princess Bride in 1987.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_01: That's uh coincidentally, the year we graduated high school.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: So uh very did you enjoy that movie?
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: I loved it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, it was a great movie.
• 30:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you could watch it at a number of different ages and get something different out of it every time.
• 30:54
  SPEAKER_01: We we actually um my kids and I during Snow Apocalypse, we were we were stuck in Denver because Austin's airport was closed.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: We couldn't we couldn't get back because all the flights were cancelled, and we were in a hotel for like three nights with not a whole lot to do, and we watched Princess Bride.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: That was one of the movies we watched.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_01: And did they like it?
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah, yeah.
• 31:15
  SPEAKER_01: We had seen it before.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: All everyone, all of us had seen it.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and yeah, it's it's a it's a classic, and everybody I can tell when everybody stays awake that it's a good movie, right?
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: If somebody falls asleep first, then not great.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: But um Andre the Giant's not in very many scenes, I don't think, but he steals the show.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely, yep.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: It's his most famous role.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: And here's a um kind of a funny thing.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_01: So he has a daughter named Robin Christensen Rousimoff, um, his only child.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: Uh he was she was born to Andre the Giant and Jean Christensen, and she Jean was a public relations person that worked for the wrestling in the wrestling industry while while Andre the Giant was a wrestler.
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um Robin was born in 1979, and she never really got to know her father.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um, as a matter of fact, it's reported that she only met him a few times before he passed away.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: Because, first of all, I don't think uh Gene Christensen and Andre the Giant had a great relationship.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't say whether they were married or not, but it either way, it sounds like you know they were they were estranged, and that Robin only met him a few times.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: In a 2020 interview of Sports Illustrated, Robin admitted that her father's role as Fezick in The Princess Bride caught her by surprise.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: She said, quote, I didn't know about it until it came out.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: My mom took me to see the movie, and I still remember the scene when they were about to kidnap Buttercup, and I said very loudly, That's my dad.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: That's sweet.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, she's she's still um she's still around.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_01: She's born in 79.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, said she lives in Seattle and that she, you know, she does some appearances at places like Comic Con and stuff like that.
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, one thing that I'm I'm really kind of curious about since Andre passed away is who gets the royalties for his likeness?
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like who owns the royalties for his likeness?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because you do see his likeness a lot on t-shirts, bumper stickers, right?
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, do you do you notice that?
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not in the circles that I travel, but sure.
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, uh, you're you're around a lot of college kids, I would think.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_01: I would think, you know, they love that retro stuff.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I mean, I certainly think he's got an iconic face.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: Even if you didn't know who it was, you know that's the face of a giant.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: He had an enormous head.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um yeah, I would think his I would think most of that stuff is bootlegged, though.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it could be.
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you you you know about Bob Ross, right?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, and do you know that I don't know about the royalty situation with him.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_01: The royalty so I watched a documentary about Bob Ross, and the royalty situation is that um his son, who many say should own the rights, does not own the rights to his father's image.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: It's owned by the Bob Ross Company, um, and which Bob Ross co-founded with another couple, a man and a woman.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: They still own it.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_01: And all these now you do see t-shirts and stickers with Bob Ross, right?
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: The happy little trees and all that stuff.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Halloween costumes, yeah.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: So all of that is owned by uh by the company that Bob Ross co-founded, but his son has no part of, and his son gets no royalties for it.
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a documentary about that that's pretty interesting.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm just curious if if that's the same case with um Andre the Giant's image.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think you could have body slammed Bob Ross?
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: Bob Ross?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: In his prime.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well, I would have been like, I don't know, six years old, so probably not.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: No, you're now he's in his prime.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: Am I am I?
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Are you saying I'm in my prime?
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: No, I'm not.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I'm I've never really seen him stand up.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_00: So for all we know, he could be seven one.
• 35:03
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, he was with hair.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Slim seven-one.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, it was his hair.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_01: It was he was a slim guy.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_00: So he was a slim guy, but if he stood up out of that folding chair, do you think you could have you could take him now when he was?
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_01: He was standing there painting and I snuck up behind him.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I could do it.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think he could body slam you?
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_00: Way too much.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_00: What about you when you were six years old and he was in his prime?
• 35:31
  SPEAKER_01: No, probably not.
• 35:33
  SPEAKER_01: I I think my parents would have gotten the way.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I don't think that he would have actually.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_01: He's not the type of person that would body slam a six-year-old, I don't think.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: Now, now if I'd offered$15,000, you know, in 1976.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: That changes every that changes everything.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that was 1976.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: That's like a million dollars.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_01: That's like a million dollars, yeah.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_00: And you want to check, Google that, and see if that's GTS everywhere.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_01: So um unfortunately, Andre passed away in 1993, and his ashes were actually spread in Albert, uh no, El Herb.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: I hope I'm saying that right.
• 36:11
  SPEAKER_01: E-L-L-E-R-B-E, Lurb, North Carolina.
• 36:15
  SPEAKER_01: And guess who delivered the eulogy?
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_01: I think I said it earlier.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: You already said it.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Hulk Hogan.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:20
  SPEAKER_00: So after all those.
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Do you think he did it in character?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_01: I think Hulk Hogan is just Hulk Hogan.
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think there is a character.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's just the Hulk.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 36:29
  SPEAKER_01: I think he dresses like that in the unit art all the time.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_01: I think he still does it.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_00: So you think he got up there in a yellow?
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_00: I guess we'll find out.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: If he shows up on an episode of this show, you'll know.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's our next step.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Here's here's the really amazing thing.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, they spread his ashes on the ranch in North Carolina, and those ashes weighed, get guess how much the ashes weighed.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll tell you what, I'll tell you they were three times the amount of a normal man's ashes.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because he was three, he weighed five hundred and five hundred and twenty pounds.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_00: That is that is heaviest.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm guessing his ashes probably weighed, yeah, 150 pounds.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_01: So you're saying an average man's ashes weigh weigh 50?
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because I said it was three times the weight of a normal man's ashes.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think an average person?
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like you've you've seen an urn, right?
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_01: They're not they're not really that big.
• 37:25
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, you're right.
• 37:28
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen an urn.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:30
  SPEAKER_00: But I've also but I thought, yeah.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: I maybe I haven't.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen urns, but I thought those they usually put pets' ashes in there.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they put people's ashes in urns as well.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: I thought, okay, so obviously my answer is way off.
• 37:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little high.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: It's a little high.
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um his ashes weighed 17 pounds.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_00: So an average person's ashes only weigh like four or five pounds, huh?
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, five, six.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: I wonder if there's a way to detect human ash in you know in the soil.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I'm sure there is.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: There's gotta be.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, so there's actually a um there is actually a little display in that town, Allerb, North Carolina.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: Might be Ellerby now that you're now that you spelled it.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_01: LRB.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_01: Ellerby.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: That sounds right.
• 38:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's like Bernie, right?
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: Bernie Texas.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: It's not born.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: Bernie.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_01: So the town of Ellerby.
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, we're just gonna say LRB.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: I like that better.
• 38:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there's actually a place called the Rankin Museum of American Heritage, and they have actually a Andre the Giant display, and you can go there and see his size 26 wrestling boots, and you can also measure your height against his.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: There's there's uh there's there's a little spot to do that, and your hand.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_01: You can put your hand up to a replica of his hand and see how tiny it is.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: I've done that with other people before, other you know, exhibits with Shaq and things like that.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's just uh Well, they have Donald Trump's hand and then they have Andre the Giant's hand, and you can compare with I I can't imagine um so there's no statue.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I haven't been there, but I think we should go.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we were talking about taking a trip with our friend next year.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: We should we should go on a road trip to Elrby, North Carolina.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: That would be and um now if you had a statue he'd be thrilled about that, wouldn't he?
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_01: He's probably gonna be our only subscriber to this show, so we should we should be nice.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: We should actually go, uh we could go on a number of different um grave sites and uh cemeteries.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_00: We don't have to make it learn.
• 39:34
  SPEAKER_01: I was gonna talk to you about our Instagram account, and that would make some great pictures for the Instagram account.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that'd be a good thing.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: So if there was a statue, do you think it should be because most statues are bigger than life?
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_00: Like if they made a statue of me, it would be like seven foot four or something.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: Wasn't there a statue of you in San Antonio outside of M Tierra?
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right, right.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_01: Or was that that was your cousin or something, right?
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_00: Your distant uh not quite cousin, but uncle.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, your great uncle.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_01: If you're ever if you ever go to Mitierra outside San Antonio, what's the guy's name?
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_01: Ben Milam.
• 40:10
  SPEAKER_01: Ben Milam, yeah.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: Go go check out the statue of Ben Mylam.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_00: Uh there's another one in uh Cameron, Texas.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, uh um yeah.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um that that that statue was not actually uh life size.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_01: That was that was bigger than life.
• 40:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 40:28
  SPEAKER_00: So what would a statue of Andre Giant would be like 15 feet tall, right?
• 40:32
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it really depends on your budget.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: What if you made it sm like smaller and you just made them like our size?
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you know what, you know, it would also be really awesome would be like if you had uh little little action figures, you know, like like those little bobbleheads or something, and and you made it really tiny, but but not quite as tiny as the other bobbleheads from the other characters.
• 40:55
  SPEAKER_01: So he just had the one kid?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, Robin, Robin uh Christensen uh Rousimoff.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_01: And she lives in uh Seattle, North Carolina.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_01: No, she lives in Seattle is what I what I read.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't I didn't do a whole lot of research on her, but um No, because she's alive.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: So actually that house did go up for auction, the the LRB house, his ranch, and uh you know, in 1993, I think it was auctioned off for less than half a million dollars, actually.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and if you had had that 15,000 from back in the day and had you know, if you had been at that match and caught the cash and invested it wisely, like bought Dell or something, you probably could have bought it with cash.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Do you so how old was he when he died?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: He was 46.
• 41:39
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think he made the right decision?
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I do.
• 41:42
  SPEAKER_01: I like you said, he burned bright.
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's better to burn out than to fade away.
• 41:47
  SPEAKER_01: We wouldn't be talking about him.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: We no, no.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: If he was still alive and moving furniture in Paris, we would I mean, unless we had experienced him moving our furniture, that might, you know, we might man.
• 41:57
  SPEAKER_01: I had the best furniture mover the other day.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: He was super nice and he carried everything.
• 42:02
  SPEAKER_00: But he might still be around, he might have had a relationship with his daughter, he might have lived uh but he still would have lived the life of a very tall man.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: And uh yeah.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: Interesting.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure what decision I would have made, but um, you know, he made the one that got him on this episode today.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, that's right.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: So if you want to know more about Andre the Giant, there is a 2018 HBO documentary, and you can watch it on HBO Max if you if you have that app.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_00: I uh can't imagine there's anything more to learn.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: I think you covered probably his entire life.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, oh, I I would imagine there's some more stuff, but uh but I don't know.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I appreciate that.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'll take that as a compliment that you feel like I did a thorough job on my on my comprehensive.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, we we did skip a lot from his birth until he was twenty-four.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't give us a lot there.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_00: You didn't give us a lot there.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, that's true.
• 43:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 43:04
  SPEAKER_00: But um but you did sell us when he was 13, he was like 6'1.
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_01: And and he and he was um he worked on the farm when he was 13.
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: He quit school to work on a farm, yeah.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_01: What what is your opinion of Andre the Giant now that we've now that we've uh kind of talked about him for 45 minutes?
• 43:22
  SPEAKER_01: Do you do you feel like closer to him?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel more affinity for him?
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_01: Do you want to watch that documentary?
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_00: I think I didn't know about all the feuds.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: A little disturbed by all the feuds.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: He couldn't.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he was, you know, from from my perspective, he was the guy in Princess Bride, and he was a gentle soul.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And now you're telling me he's got all these beefs with people and challenging them and throwing people around.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_00: I I didn't know the violent part.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know he was so violent.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_00: The dark side.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew the actor, like the guy that's saving the princess, and so I didn't know there was a whole violent side of our.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, that wasn't really.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: Him, that was a character he was playing.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_01: Both were characters he was playing.
• 44:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: He played, he played a really nice guy, and he played uh uh I I actually think in pro wrestling, as I recall, there were kind of the good guys and the bad guys.
• 44:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they kind of fell into these categories back then.
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I do think he fell into the good guy category.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_01: I could be okay but let's let's see if our listeners try to correct me on that one.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: So um uh do we have a website?
• 44:27
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we have a domain name.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh dirtnapcity.com.
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_01: So if you if you do want to visit, we'll try to get that up soon.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: Well, maybe they can mail us.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Do we have an address?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: Uh well we're gonna have we're gonna have it in the dirtknapcity and uh Kelly at Dirt Knap City.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, so they can send an email to that.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:45
  SPEAKER_01: Send an email, let us know what you think, and let us know what you think about this format.
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_01: What do you think about the podcast?
• 44:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you liked it, please recommend it to other people.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, open some fake accounts and subscribe ten times.
• 44:56
  SPEAKER_01: We'd really appreciate that.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Join our Patreon, which doesn't exist yet, but believe me, our first couple of Patreon folks are gonna be like the early friends of of uh Andre the Giant.
• 45:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, they're gonna they're gonna be able to say, I knew him back when he was still moving furniture.
• 45:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you don't have to say that it doesn't exist because by the time they're listening to it, it probably will exist.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: And same with the uh email address.
• 45:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um what about a telegraph?
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like if they send a telegraph I was like, app, or are you talking about like an actual telegraph?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, is there is there an app?
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_00: There's an app called Telegraph, yeah.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: What does that do?
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh like WhatsApp?
• 45:34
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's mostly for scammers.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like if you ever if you ever get a notification that you want a prize, if you want a prize from this from this podcast and they tell you to telegraph them uh to to to connect with them on telegraph, it's probably a scam.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_00: But a real telegraph back in the day.
• 45:51
  SPEAKER_00: You mean like do do do do do do I was thinking about this actually this morning.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know how it works.
• 45:59
  SPEAKER_00: So you go to a Western Union, yeah, right, and you say, I want to this is like this is like 1858.
• 46:08
  SPEAKER_01: Sure.
• 46:09
  SPEAKER_00: Sure.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then how do you know if you got a telegraph?
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_01: They knew Morse code, so they would be able to write down the message, and then depending on who you were, if you were important, um, you might have to come to the Western Union to get it.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_01: Or if you weren't important, but if you were important enough, they might send a writer.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_01: You know that stagecoach?
• 46:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, they would send the stagecoach out to your house to deliver the message.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: But if you weren't important though, how do you know that there's a message waiting for you?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you were gonna say they call you, yeah, then why doesn't the original person call you?
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's do they just they just I I actually don't know.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: I feel like that back in those days the towns were small enough that um that you know you pretty much everybody knew everybody.
• 46:56
  SPEAKER_01: So if you did receive a telegraph, someone would know that you who you were.
• 47:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like I, oh yeah, that's Alex.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: He lives out on County Road 42.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna hop on trigger and ride on out there.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because in the old days, everybody had that accent.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody talked like us.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder when the first, the last telegraph ever was sent.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's probably still like clubs, you know, there's probably a subreddit for telegraph operators that are still using telegraph today.
• 47:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, a lot of people, um, you know, I think a lot of those uh, you know, kind of groups that are really focused on privacy, they they use telegraph because it's you know, privacy is very ultimate encryption.
• 47:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's right.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_00: I would say if you're in the one of those telegraph subreddits, email us, but I bet you wouldn't email us.
• 47:51
  SPEAKER_01: That's right.
• 47:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, so so uh thank you everyone for joining us today.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_01: We've almost got to an hour, which is fantastic.
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: If you enjoyed this episode, please let us know at dirtnapcity.com.
• 48:07
  SPEAKER_01: We've got our contact information there.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_01: We'll leave a place for you to comment, etc., if you have suggestions for future episodes.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we appreciate you tuning in.
• 48:17
  SPEAKER_01: We'll see you next time, next week on Dirtnap City.