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In the last few years, there has been few books on both professional wrestling and mixed martial arts that I’ve looked forward to reading like I have with Andre The Giant: A Legendary Life. However, after reading the book, I must say that while the book does a great job detailing the WWF run of Andre The Giant, the book fails at covering every other aspect of his life and professional wrestling career.
Let me put it this way, the first seven pages of this book cover a timeline starting with Andre The Giant's birth to his first appearance in Vince McMahon Sr.’s World Wide Wrestling Federation. Although there is a few references made to Andre The Giant's wrestling career outside of the WWWF and later WWF, like in Mid-South Wrestling and All Japan Pro Wrestling, it is made without much importance.
One thing I really enjoyed about the book was the comments made by wrestlers and wrestling personalities alike about Andre The Giant. Wrestling personalities like Vince McMahon, Shane McMahon, Linda McMahon, “Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase, Tim White, Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, Howard Finkel, Terry Funk, One Man Gang, Hulk Hogan and others.
The book also does an excellent job of recapping popular and less known matches involving Andre The Giant and others like Hulk Hogan, Randy “Macho Man” Savage, Demolition, “Big” John Studd, Killer Khan, Bam Bam Bigelow, Jake “The Snake” Roberts. This feature in the book also highlights one of the books biggest failures which is not giving much acknowledge to Andre The Giant's non-WWF matches.
The book also highlights Andre The Giant's role in the feature film “The Princess Bride”, which also includes comments from people in the movie. The book also features a touching story from Ted Dibiase, discussing how proud Andre The Giant was of his role in the film and how he would watch the film as many times as he can in between wrestling appearances.
Also discussed in this autobiography is the legendary drinking abilities of Andre The Giant, which a chapter of this book is dedicated to. I think that last statement speaks for itself, that Andre The Giant's drinking was so legendary that a whole chapter of the book was dedicated to it. There is also a good story from Ted Dibiase about going to a bar with Andre The Giant and Andre The Giant requesting the waitress fill a garbage can with beer and the waitress obliged.
The most intriguing section of this book comes near the end, where there is a page discussing Andre The Giant appearing on WCW Clash Of The Champions XX. However, this was before the heated rivalry or “Monday Night Wars” between the WWE and WCW, it was years earlier. There is comments from both Vince and Shane McMahon about how hurt Vince McMahon was that Andre The Giant appeared on WCW TV.
The book concludes with the sad passing of Andre The Giant, which happened in 1993 while Andre The Giant was in Europe for his fathers funeral. The author even tells a story about how an aircraft had to redistribute its weight so that it can fly safely with Andre The Giant's body aboard. Then the book finishes with acknowledging that the WWE Hall Of Fame was created for Andre The Giant after his passing.
To conclude, while this book does a real good job of covering Andre The Giant's run in the WWWF/WWF, it does fail to cover Andre The Giant's wrestling career and life outside of the WWF/WWWF.
You can contact David Tees at bigtees360@yahoo.com
