As a child he wouldn’t fit on the school bus, he could drink over 120 beers, doctors didn’t understand how to give him anesthesia, his air travel was legend as was his wrestling career. But how much truth is there behind the stories told about Andre the Giant?
André René Roussimoff was born weighing six kilos but his mother never stopped calling him Dédé. After all, it was her little one. As for all the others, many, that he met in his short, extraordinary life, small was never the adjective they used to describe Dédé. At twelve years old he was already one meter ninety two tall and weighed 90 kilos. He came to look at the world from the remarkable height of two meters and thirteen centimeters, and to reach 227 kilos in weight. When we talk about bullying, let’s try for a moment to imagine the life of Dédé Roussimoff. To tell his story it is necessary to juggle between the storylines, the plots that wrestling creatives sewed on him, and the legends that have flourished around the forty-six years of his existence. Starting from his bond with Samuel Beckett, the Irish writer who would later win the Nobel Prize for literature.
