Over the past decades, WWE has produced several stars like The Undertaker, The Rock, Big Show, Kane, Hulk Hogan, and Stone Cold Steve Austin, among many others.
They are fans’ heroes, larger than life, mighty, seemingly invincible giants.
They mark their names in the public’s memory and make a lot of money doing that.
But the wrestling business almost always involves unfriendly schedules to perform physically-demanding spectacles on stage.
In the past, some wrestlers were known to have relied on painkillers or other drugs to cope with exhaustion and injuries.
Unexpected deaths from drug overdose were not exactly uncommon. But not all the unexpected deathunforeseenrestlers involved drugs.
In the case of Andre the Giant, the cause of death was congestive heart failure. He died in Paris on January 28, 1993, at the age of 46. It was a premature death, but not entirely unexpected.
Andre was born with acromegaly, a syndrome that made him grow beyond average size for a man of his age. For several years before his death, Andre had already been in decline associated with his constant growth.
9 /9 Immense Stature
His exact height and weight at the time of his death remain unclear as few sources suggest different accounts.
Some say he stood 7’2″ and weighed over 550lbs, while others believed he was no taller than 7 feet and no more than 380 pounds.
But by the time Andre was 17-years-old, he stood 6’7″, taller than most boys his age.
When Andre was only starting to make a name for himself in the ring in France as “Monster Eiffel Tower,” one French-Canadian wrestler named Edouard Carpentier was so impressed that he decided to bring Andre’s raw talent to North America.
8 /9 The 8th Wonder Of The World
In Canada, he wrestled under the name Jean Ferre for the Grand Prix Promotion.
His popularity soon exceeded the expectations, growing from an undercard to a headline name. Larger than anybody in the ring, fans called him “The 8th Wonder of the World,” inspired by the King Kong film.
The nickname stuck with Andre throughout the rest of his professional wrestling career.
He already had established a good reputation in Montreal when in 1972, Vince McMahon, Sr. (father of the current CEO of WWE) signed him for the WWWF and changed his name to “Andre the Giant.”