In the history of professional wrestling, hyperbole is the native language. Heights are exaggerated, weights are inflated, and attendance numbers are rounded up to the nearest ten thousand. However, when it comes to André René Roussimoff, known to the world as Andre the Giant, the tall tales were often understatements. Standing over seven feet tall and weighing upwards of 500 pounds during his prime, Andre was a biological anomaly who lived a life of extremes.
The 119 and 156 Beer Records
The most famous stories regarding Andre involve his beer consumption. These are not vague rumors but specific accounts corroborated by fellow wrestlers who witnessed the feats.
One of the most cited incidents occurred in the 1970s and was recounted by wrestler Mike Graham. According to Graham, Andre once consumed 156 beers in one sitting. This took place after a show, and the consumption was not a frantic chug but a steady, rhythmic intake over several hours.
Another legendary account comes from the Fabulous Moolah and Dusty Rhodes. They recounted a night in Reading, Pennsylvania, where the roster stopped at a hotel bar. The bartenders, realizing who had walked in, began sending cases of beer to the table.
According to Rhodes, Andre consumed 119 beers in six hours. But the story takes a darker, yet humorous turn. After consuming that amount of liquid, Andre eventually passed out in the hotel lobby. Because he weighed over 500 pounds, he could not be moved. The hotel staff and the wrestlers tried to lift him but failed.
The Wine on the Bus
While beer was a staple, Andre also had a refined palate for French wine, often consuming it in quantities that baffle the mind. During the territory days, wrestlers often traveled by bus between towns. These trips could last four to eight hours.
Gerald Brisco, a wrestler and longtime WWE agent, shared a story about Andre’s bus ritual. Before a trip, Andre would visit a liquor store and purchase six cases of Mateus wine. This was not for the bus; this was for him.
Hulk Hogan, perhaps Andre’s greatest rival and friend, corroborated these stories. Hogan noted that Andre treated wine bottles “like nip bottles.” His hands were so large—his fingers the size of sausages—that a standard 750ml wine bottle looked like a miniature toy in his grip. Hogan recalled Andre drinking 12 bottles of wine while sitting on a bus in Japan, roughly three hours before a match, and then going out and performing flawlessly.
The Princess Bride Era
One of the most charming and well-documented periods of Andre’s life was the filming of The Princess Bride in 1986. Andre played Fezzik the Giant. By this time, his back pain was excruciating. He had undergone back surgery, and his body was beginning to fail him.
Cary Elwes, who played Westley in the film, wrote extensively about Andre’s drinking in his memoir, As You Wish. Elwes described Andre’s drinking not as an act of hedonism, but as a form of self-medication.
According to Elwes, Andre’s “bar tab” at the hotel in London where the cast stayed was staggering. At the end of the shoot, the production accountant reportedly told Elwes that Andre had racked up a tab of over $40,000 in alcohol alone.
Elwes also recounted a night where Andre convinced him to go drinking. Elwes, a man of average size, tried to keep up with the Giant. He woke up the next day with the worst hangover of his life, while Andre arrived on set fresh, energetic, and ready to work.
During the production, Andre famously invited the cast to drink “The American.” This was a concoction of Andre’s own making: a pitcher filled with various liquors and mixers, totaling 40 ounces of alcohol. Andre would drink several of these in a night.
The Vodka and the Pain
As Andre’s health deteriorated in the late 1980s, his drink of choice often shifted to vodka, likely for its potency and efficiency.
Bobby “The Brain” Heenan, Andre’s manager during the WrestleMania III era, told a story about a flight to Japan. Andre ordered a vodka tonic. When the flight attendant brought the small airline bottle, Andre politely asked her not to bother opening the little bottles. He asked if there was a full bottle on the plane. The flight attendant brought him a full bottle of vodka. Andre reportedly finished the bottle during the flight, while reading a book, without ever becoming belligerent.
This connects to the physical reality of his condition. Acromegaly causes severe joint pain. The skeletal structure is under immense pressure. In an era before advanced pain management clinics or a wellness policy in wrestling, alcohol was the anesthetic.
Ric Flair, in his autobiography, noted that Andre was in “constant pain.” The drinking numbed the back, the knees, and the neck. It allowed him to function.
The Massive Tabs
The financial aspect of Andre’s drinking is another layer of the legend. Because he was often the highest-paid wrestler in the world, he could afford the habit, but the numbers were still eye-watering.
There are stories of Andre walking into a bar and declaring, “The drink is on me,” buying rounds for the entire establishment. But even when drinking alone or with a small group, the tabs were monumental.
In the documentary Andre the Giant, produced by HBO, there is a recounting of a month-long stay at a Hyatt hotel in London. When Andre checked out, the bar bill alone was nearly $40,000. This figure, adjusted for inflation, would be well over $100,000 today.
However, Andre was also known for his generosity. He hated when others tried to pay. There is a famous story involving Arnold Schwarzenegger. The two were having dinner, and Schwarzenegger attempted to quietly pay the bill. Andre, realizing what was happening, lifted Schwarzenegger up—physically picking up the bodybuilder and movie star—and placed him back in his chair (or on top of a car, depending on the version of the story), stating, “I pay.”
The “Friendly Giant” vs. The “Nasty Giant”
While many stories paint Andre as a jovial drunk, there was a darker side. When Andre drank too much, or if he felt disrespected, he could become terrifying.
Ted DiBiase, “The Million Dollar Man,” traveled with Andre extensively. He noted that while Andre was usually a “gentle giant,” alcohol could flip a switch. If fans were rude, or if people stared at him too long, the alcohol lowered his inhibitions regarding his strength.
There are accounts of Andre flipping cars over in a drunken rage. Bad News Brown recounted a story where Andre, intoxicated and angry about a racial slur or a perceived slight, ripped a door off a car.
In bars, if someone annoyed him, Andre wouldn’t punch them. A punch from Andre could kill a man. Instead, he would often grab them, squeeze them, or drown them in a bearhug until they passed out or learned their lesson. The local police, realizing they had no way to arrest or transport a 500-pound giant, would often just let the wrestlers handle him.
The End of the Party
By the early 1990s, the lifestyle had caught up with him. Andre’s heart, enlarged by his condition and strained by the alcohol, was failing. He made his final appearances for the WWF and All Japan Pro Wrestling, moving slower than ever.
In January 1993, Andre returned to France to attend his father’s funeral. He stayed in a hotel in Paris. On the night of January 27, 1993, he went to sleep and never woke up. He died of congestive heart failure at the age of 46.
While the primary cause was his untreated acromegaly, there is no doubt among medical experts and his peers that the sheer volume of alcohol he consumed over three decades contributed to the strain on his heart.
Conclusion
The stories of Andre the Giant’s drinking are often told with a smile, used to illustrate his larger-than-life persona. We laugh at the idea of 156 beers or a man drinking a bus dry of wine.
However, when viewed through the lens of history, these stories are a testament to the burden he carried. Andre drank to numb the pain of a body that was growing itself to death. He drank to cope with the isolation of being a spectacle. He drank because, in a world that treated him like a monster or a myth, the bar was the one place where he could sit down, relax, and just be Andre.
The 100-beer stories are not just frat-boy legends; they are the medical charts of a man who lived in a different physical reality than anyone else on Earth.
