10 Funniest Wrestling Shoot Stories

There seems to be one thing that holds true in professional wrestling, over and above all the rules, codes of etiquette and everything else: if you’re truly old school, or you’re second or third generation and your parents are old school, you’ll have an Andre The Giant story.

Referred to as ‘the boss’ by the boys backstage, Andre was a larger than life character in more ways than the fact of his sheer size. There’s the story of how he took exception to being accused of working in a fake sport by two fans and chased them out of the bar and overturned their car with them in it. There’s the one about his dislike of the Ultimate Warrior’s casual clumsiness that led him to unload a whole bushel of potatoes on the guy in the ring as a receipt. There’s the really noxious one Jim Duggan tells about Andre’s unique ‘musk’ and how he was once legitimately choked out by it during a match, the strap of Andre’s sweat-soaked singlet coming down across his mouth and nearly making him vomit.

But the favourite will probably always be the story of Andre’s dinner with Arnold Schwarzenegger and basketball legend Wilt Chamberlain in Mexico in the eighties. Flush with cinematic success, Schwarzenegger tried to step up and settle the tab with some of that Conan money. It was a rookie error: no one pays for Andre The Giant’s dinner. The colossus simply picked Schwarzenegger up and carried him outside, placing him on the roof of his own car for everyone to see, as a punishment for getting above himself.