Andre The Giant's Biographer On Why He Hated Randy Savage, Resented Vince McMahon & Opted Against Surgery

Pat Laprade, author of The Eighth Wonder Of The World: The True Story of Andre The Giant, was recently a guest on the Talk is Jericho podcast.

While discussing the book, Laprade also shed some light on Andre's relationship with key figures in WWE, including Vince McMahon.

According to the author, Andre harboured some resentment towards Vince because his commitments to the company meant that he wasn't able to travel as much as he had previously: "The big difference between the way that Vince Sr. and Vince Jr. used Andre was that Vince Sr didn’t use him much in his own territory because he was getting a cut on Andre when he was traveling all over the world. He was making money on Andre without using him in his own territory and what he had learned from was that if you used Andre too much in the same territory, he was not going to draw as much as when you first book him.

“That’s what Andre liked. He could travel the world, visiting different friends, different promotions, and I think that’s what he didn’t like from Vince Jr, that Vince Jr kept him more in his own territory and Andre didn’t get to see all his friends. He was traveling all over North America, but it was the same locker room over and over. I think Andre had a lot of bitterness toward Vince Jr because of this.”

Andre was also open about his dislike for 'Macho Man' Randy Savage, a frequent opponent in WWE: “I talked to Lanny Poffo, Randy’s brother about it and he said it was 100% true. The reason why was Randy was wrestling with baby oil on and Andre didn’t like it one bit. Even Lanny tried to tell Randy, why not skip the baby oil when you are wrestling Andre and Randy said he didn’t want to make any exceptions.

"The reason behind it was it was hard for Andre to take a shower when he went back to his hotel room because the showers in the hotels were not made for a person of his size. Some nights he would prefer to just stay at the bar alone at night and keep drinking rather than go back to his room and do nothing. It would be hard for us to get rid of all that baby oil, let alone Andre who had trouble just getting in the shower to begin with. I don’t think Randy understood that and Andre probably never explained it to him because he was too proud or he wanted Andre to find the explanation himself. He really didn’t like Randy.”

Andre, who passed away in 1993 at the age of 46, suffered from acromegaly but opted against surgery (despite it being available to him) because: "He said God made him this way and he didn’t want to change it. He was also scared that his dimensions were going to change with the surgery, then he felt he would lose what made him special. I would think he was misinformed because he would not have changed that much.”

Andre The Giant was the inaugural inductee into the WWE Hall of Fame upon its creation in 1993.