André René Roussimoff, better known as André the Giant, was a French professional wrestler and actor. He stood around seven feet tall, which was a result of gigantism caused by excess growth hormone, and later resulted in acromegaly. During the 1980s wrestling boom, he was paired with the villainous manager Bobby Heenan and feuded with Hulk Hogan. He also held the WWF Tag Team Championship before failing health forced him to retire in 1992. He is best known for appearing as Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride.
About André the Giant in brief
André René Roussimoff, better known as André the Giant, was a French professional wrestler and actor. He stood around seven feet tall, which was a result of gigantism caused by excess growth hormone, and later resulted in acromegaly. During the 1980s wrestling boom, he was paired with the villainous manager Bobby Heenan and feuded with Hulk Hogan. He also held the WWF Tag Team Championship before failing health forced him to retire in 1992. Outside of wrestling, he is best known for appearing as Fezzik, the giant in The Princess Bride. After his death in 1993, he became the inaugural inductee into the newly created WWF Hall of Fame. His nickname growing up was Dédé ). At birth André weighed 13 pounds and as a child he displayed symptoms of giganticism very early, noted as being a good head taller than other the kids. By the time he was age 12, André stood 191 cm. André was an average student, though good at mathematics, but after finishing school at 14, as he did not think higher education was necessary for a farm laborer, he instead joined the workforce. He trained at night and worked as a mover during the day to pay living expenses. He was billed as \”Géant Ferré\”, a name based on the Picardian folk hero Grand Ferré, and began wrestling in Paris and nearby areas. He made his Japanese debut in 1970, billed as “Monster RousSimoff’s” wrestling for the International Wrestling Enterprise.
He quickly was made the company’s tag-team champion alongside Michael Nador. He next moved to Montreal, Canada in 1971, where he became an immediate success, but promoters eventually ran out of opponents for him and, as the novelty of his size wore off, the gate receipts dwindled. In 1971, he defeated Adnan Al-Kaissie in Baghdad in 1971 and wrestled numerous times in 1971 for Verne Gagne’s American Wrestling Association as a special attraction. He later moved to the World Wide Wrestling Federation and set up the special attraction Rouskicks. He died in 1993 at the age of 48, and is survived by his wife, two children, and two grandchildren. He is buried in Paris, France, in a suburb of the city known as the suburb of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. He had a son named André, who was born in 1961 and grew up in the town of Coulommiers of Slavic heritage, the third of five children, to Boris and Marianne Rous simoff Stoeff. His parents were immigrants to France; his father was Bulgarian and his mother was Polish. He has a brother Jacques, who is also a professional wrestler. His father was Irishman and Bulgarian-descended French boy, with a surprising common ground, their love of cricket, with André recalling that the two rarely talked about anything else. His brother Jacques could perform the work of three men.
You want to know more about André the Giant?
This page is based on the article André the Giant published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 08, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.