You’ve seen the photo. It’s grainy, black and white, and looks like a total fake. In the picture, a massive hand is wrapped around a silver can of Molson Canadian beer. The thing is, the beer looks like a toy. It looks like a dollhouse accessory or a miniature sample you'd find at a trade show. People on the internet love to scream "Photoshop!" whenever it pops up in their feed.
But it’s real. That andre the giant can photo wasn't the result of some early 80s digital trickery. It was shot for a 1981 issue of Sports Illustrated, and it perfectly captured the surreal reality of being Andre Rene Roussimoff.
The Truth About That Iconic Photo
When Stephen Green-Armytage sat down to photograph Andre, he had a problem. How do you actually show someone's scale in a magazine? If you stand him next to a tall guy, he just looks like a slightly taller guy. If you put him next to a horse, people might think it’s a pony.
Basically, the photographer needed an "anchor." Everyone knows exactly how big a 12-ounce beer can is. It’s a universal constant of the American (and Canadian) bar scene. So, they handed Andre a Molson.
His hand didn't just hold the can; it swallowed it. His fingers were so thick that a silver dollar could pass through his ring. His wrists were over a foot in circumference—literally the size of an adult male gorilla’s. In that shot, the can looks like a AA battery in a normal person's palm. Honestly, it’s the most honest piece of sports photography ever taken because it doesn’t need a caption to tell you the guy was a literal giant.
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How Many Beers Did He Actually Drink?
Let's talk about the records. If you ask ten different wrestlers, you'll get ten different numbers. The most famous story involves Andre sitting in a Pennsylvania hotel bar and crushing 119 beers in a single six-hour sitting.
Think about that math for a second. That is nearly 20 beers an hour. One every three minutes.
Most people would be dead. Like, medically deceased. But for Andre, who weighed north of 500 pounds and stood 7'4", his body was basically a biological sponge. Because of his acromegaly, his organs were larger, his blood volume was massive, and his metabolism was a furnace.
Wrestling legends like Mike Graham and Dusty Rhodes have gone on record claiming they saw him do even more. Graham swore he watched Andre polish off 156 beers in one night. That’s 14.6 gallons of liquid. Most human stomachs can only hold about a liter or two at once, but Andre wasn't most humans.
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The Famous Lobby Incident
There is a legendary story from the set of The Princess Bride. Cary Elwes, who played Westley, told this one often. One night, Andre got so incredibly drunk at the hotel bar that he simply... stopped. He didn't fall; he just sort of powered down.
He passed out right in the middle of the hotel lobby.
The staff tried to move him. They really did. But you can't exactly "carry" a 500-pound man who is effectively a dead weight of muscle and bone. They couldn't get him into the elevator. They couldn't even slide him.
The solution? They left him there. They literally draped a velvet rope around him like he was a museum exhibit and told the night staff not to vacuum near the giant. He woke up the next morning, probably with a mild headache, and went to work.
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Why Did He Drink So Much?
It’s easy to look at the andre the giant can stories and think it was all just a party. It wasn't. Andre was in constant, agonizing pain. His back was failing him. His joints were screaming under the weight of a body that never stopped growing.
Alcohol was his medicine.
Standard painkillers didn't work on him because the dosages required to dull his pain were high enough to kill a normal man's liver. He once told a doctor that it took two liters of vodka just to make him "feel warm."
When he eventually had to have back surgery, the anesthesiologist had no idea how to knock him out. They had to use his drinking habits as a baseline to calculate the dosage. They basically had to figure out how much "booze" it took to stop a giant, then translate that into medical gases.
Actionable Insights for Fans and Historians
If you're looking into the legend of Andre's drinking or that famous photo, here is what you need to keep in mind to separate the myth from the man:
- Trust the SI Archives: The 1981 Sports Illustrated feature "To the Giant Among Us" by Terry Todd is the definitive source for the beer can photo. It confirms the can was a standard 12-ounce size.
- Check the Physics: While 119-156 beers sounds impossible, remember that blood alcohol concentration (BAC) is a function of weight and body water. At 520 pounds, Andre's "legal limit" was vastly different from yours.
- The "One Sitting" Rule: In wrestling lore, a "sitting" often meant an entire evening into the early morning (8-10 hours), which makes the 100+ beer count slightly more plausible than a 2-hour sprint.
- Look for the Casts: If you ever doubt his hand size, visit the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas. They have a bronze cast of his hand. Seeing it in person makes the beer can photo look completely reasonable.
The next time you see that photo of the tiny-looking can, remember it wasn't a stunt. It was just a Tuesday for a man who lived in a world built for people half his size.