The Tremendous Number Of Beers Andre The Giant Could Throw Back

When wrestling fans talk about a hypothetical Mt. Rushmore that would feature all-time greats like Hulk Hogan, Stone Cold Steve Austin, and The Undertaker, André Roussimoff, aka André the Giant, is often in the mix. The problem with including the Eighth Wonder of the World is that he'd need most of the mountain all to himself since he was literally one of the sport's biggest stars at 7 feet, 4 inches tall and more than 500 pounds. Needless to say, it took a lot to fuel such a super-sized body, but it wasn't just food that sustained the big man. According to numerous accounts, he frequently put away enough beer to float a fleet of battleships. How much are we talking about? Well, in a 1984 appearance on "The David Letterman Show," André confirmed a rumor that he'd once knocked back 117 beers in a single night.

Just so you know, 117 beers over 6 hours would have been enough to give even a man weighing a quarter-ton a blood alcohol concentration more than 10 times the legal limit of 0.08. This definitely falls into the "don't try this at home, kids" category, since it'll quite likely kill you. The crazy thing is, there are stories out there where André tops even this feat. Hulk Hogan told CBS Boston that his gargantuan drinking buddy once put away 108 beers in just 45 minutes, while another wrestler named Mike Graham claimed in an episode of "WWE Legends of Wrestling" that he'd counted 156 pint-sized cans of beer that the Giant threw back one night.

Beer may have been one of André's go-to beverages — there are few, if any, accounts of him sucking down soda — and during his days with the WWF ( the precursor to the WWE) he'd reportedly warm up for a match by guzzling about 12 quarts of the stuff. We did the math for you: This is the equivalent of three gallons, or 32 12-ounce beers. However, during the days when the Giant was still wrestling in the territories, as the local promos were called, it seems he may have preferred wine, which stands to reason since he was French, and France is one of the world's top wine producers. Gerald Brisco, who wrestled with André back in those days, told the Tampa Bay Times that his friend's regular pre-match ritual involved emptying six bottles of rosé. As Hulk Hogan recounted to CBS Boston, one time during a bus ride, the big man knocked back a dozen bottles of wine in three hours.

André didn't stay away from the harder stuff, either. Bobby "The Brain" Heenan, another old-school wrestler, recounts in his autobiography how his colleague once kept a hotel bartender up way past his bedtime by ordering and consuming 40 vodka tonics

By all accounts, A the G was a fun drunk — countless wrestling world sagas begin with André double-fisting six-packs and just get wackier from there. There was the time he and Dusty Rhodes hijacked horse-drawn carriages for a drunken joyride, and also the time where he passed out in a hotel lobby and slept camouflaged under a piano cover. As the old saying (that we just made up) goes, 1 giant + 100 beers = 1,000 stories. While drinking didn't make the big man morose, though, he was nevertheless doing it for self-medicating purposes.

According to André's "Princess Bride" co-star Cary Elwes, the wrestler-turned-actor drank because his super-sized body was hurting more than he could bear due to the numerous injuries he'd sustained over the course of his career. As Elwes told Vanity Fair, "His doctor didn't know what kind of pain medication to give him because of his size, so the only way that he could deal with the pain was to drink alcohol." Former pro wrestler Ted DiBiase concurred, telling CBS Sports: "He hated pills, medicine, and painkillers and stuff, because he saw what it was doing to other guys," and adding that, "The way André killed his pain and medicated himself was with booze."