As we all know by now, HBO recently premiered their highly-anticipated documentary on the life and career of WWE’s first-ever Hall Of Famer, Andre The Giant. In the documentary, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon talks about convincing Andre to return to the ring, to pass the torch to Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 3 and how Hogan was worried about how everything was going to go down.
Featured below are some of the comments from Vince McMahon in the new Andre The Giant documentary on HBO:
On convincing Andre to come back to headline the Pontiac Silverdome at WrestleMania 3: “André knew that he wasn’t long for the world and he was hurting. He was really, really hurting and I went over to visit with him. And André told me, ‘I’m done, boss.’ When he said ‘done’, he meant, ‘not just wrestling – after this I’m done.’ Basically, ‘I’m going to go die.’ He told me about his neck and his back and things of that nature and what it would take to have it fixed, but he was not interested at all. And when I spoke to him about, ‘well, here’s why I came over, because there’s a building in Pontiac, Michigan that holds 93,000 people and I think we could set up the promotion correctly and I think it would sell it out.’” McMahon continued, “André wanted to have a reason to live, not a reason to die. And he knew, ‘wow, I could have a new lease on life if I could get through this operation. The allure of Hogan pulled André through.”

On Hogan being worried about how things with Andre were going to go during the match: “Hogan was really concerned that André wasn’t going to ‘put him over’ and André did not want Hogan to know. Terry had so much respect for André that he wouldn’t just come up to André and go, ‘are you going to put me over?’ He wouldn’t do that because that would be disrespectful, so there was always this bit of doubt. He kept coming to me, ‘are you sure the boss is going to put me over?’ ‘No problem.’ ‘Are you sure?’ ‘He’s going to do it, Terry.’” McMahon added, “André loved to bust balls and he was busting Hogan’s balls. And out of respect to André, I’m going to go right along with it, so Hogan was concerned all the way up to the day of the show.”
On Andre resenting Vince a little bit when his career winded down: “When his career was over, he had no value to himself,” McMahon stated. “‘No longer am I going to be around the boys, and socializing, and things of that nature. I’m stuck here in North Carolina.’ And I was responsible for the fact that business was good and everybody was going on without him. André, more or less, wanted to blame me and resented me a bit because he knew the [sports entertainment] business was going on without him. André resented that a bit too, that his time was up, damn it, and yet I was going to continue on. And, sometimes, it can even be a situation whereby, ‘what? You used me.’ No longer when I was in André’s presence was it a warm admiration that we had for each other. It wasn’t there.”
You can know more about this story and other stories involving Andre the Giant by watching the HBO Documentary.