10 Wrestlers That Totally Broke The Mould

1. Andre The Giant

Indisputably the most beloved wrestler of all time, Andre The Giant was a massive draw wherever he went. Reports vary as to his actual height, but he was usually billed as being 7,4€ and weighing 500lbs. His deep, rumbling, heavily accented voice only added to his mystique and his mischievous, yet strangely reassuring, grin (showing twice as many teeth as most people have) got him over with the fans that were too afraid to sit in the front row. Afflicted with gigantism caused by acromegaly, young Andre Roussimoff (yes, the face on all the Shepherd Fairey €˜Obey€™ merch) was always going to stand out. At the age of 12, he stood at over six feet tall and weighed more than 200 lbs. In wrestling, Andre played the part of the gentle giant, who, when angered, became an unstoppable force of nature. This wasn€™t much of a far cry from his real life personality. Andre could be grumpy (especially as he was frequently stared at and suffered from constant pain), but he loved his fans and he loved the wrestling business. However, if somebody tried to test him, they would quickly find themselves in a very difficult situation. In one famous incident, four bullies decided to try their luck against The Giant, who was quietly minding his own business in a bar. Evidently, they soon thought better of it and ran away from him, locking themselves in a nearby car for protection from the angry giant. Undeterred, an enraged Andre literally picked the car off the ground and flipped it over, proving his point with extreme prejudice. Sadly for Andre, the world he inhabited was simply too small for him. The wrestling lifestyle of excruciatingly long car journeys, plane rides and often-shabby hotel accommodations must have been harder for Andre than it was for any other wrestler before or since. One road story holds that Andre couldn€™t actually fit into a miniscule hotel toilet and so was forced to take a dump on the bed. Of course, he made a joke out of it, but it must have been a very upsetting and humiliating experience for the man. In addition, Andre€™s cost of living must have been very high indeed. Any man who can drink 156 beers in one sitting would likely need to take out a second mortgage to pay his bar tab - and Andre needed to eat and drink an awful lot in order to stay healthy. He could chew through twelve steaks or fifteen whole lobsters if he was hungry enough. In Terry Funk€™s autobiography More Than Just Hardcore, he recalls an incident in the 1970€™s where he and his brother Dory decided to buy Andre dinner, as a gesture of respect to the man and his accomplishments within the business. Seven bottles of wine later, the Funk brothers were slapped with a $600 bill. By the mid 1970€™s, Andre was earning as much as $400,000 a year. In the 1980€™s, he used his money to buy a farm for himself in North Carolina. Finally, the former farmhand had returned home, he had a place to live that was secluded enough to be private, but open enough to have his friends over for his legendary parties. Andre died in 1993. He was just 46 years old. Posthumously, the former WWF Champion was made the first entrant into the WWE Hall of Fame. In more ways than one, the wrestling business will never see a bigger star than Andre The Giant. There you have it, grapple fans, ten wrestlers that didn€™t so much break the mould, as completely smashed it to pieces. True originals, every one.