Essential writing, mediocre reading.

Hébert and Laprade have written one of the finest pro wrestling biographies to date. The capture the charm and complexity André, and clear up many mistruths ambiguities perpetuated by the world of professional wresting.

Unfortunately, the reading left some to be desired. Given the audience of this book would be primarily wrestling fans, there are mispronounced names of wrestlers and arenas scattered about. Worse still, might be the half-attempt of impersonating the voices some of the more famous figures in the book. They come across as either copy/pasted after the fact or too inconstant. The larger a fan a listener, the more this might take them out of the experience.

Still, this is absolutely an essential book for any fan of professional wrestling.

4 people found this helpful

The Narration Nearly Ruins A Perfectly Good Book

It's been said in the other reviews, the Narrator is atrocious! Mispronouncing names like Arm Anderson, Marty Jan-iti, and Argentina (Almond) Roca is more annoying that you might think. But what really bothered me is the frequency of him saying "Pee Pee Vee" in a delivery that tells me he has no idea what it stands for. In fact any acronym in the book is delivered that way, and few are actually explained - I know what the acronyms stand for, but it's not as pleasant to the ear. His half-hearted impressions of the voices he quotes are awful as well. *I would buy this book over if it were re-recorded.*

As for the book itself, it is the definitive tome on Andre The Giant. Nothing can take away from that. Even though they use smark sources like Meltzer's nonsense (among other, more reputable sources), that too, can have it's weight as the myths of Andre also made the legend (as the book so beautifully explains).

2 people found this helpful

Very distracting narrator.

The book was well researched and took an interesting look at a mythical character in Andre, but the narrator seemed very unfamiliar with terms and names from pro wrestling. His mispronunciations of names and repeated readings of acronyms as their constituent letters was distracting to me.

1 person found this helpful

Very Annoying Narrator

The book is great. A necessary biography of a legend. However, the narrator has a voice that left me cold. On top of that, he mispronounces words.

1 person found this helpful

The Best Wrestling Biography

A must read for any fan of wrestling. Quite possibly the best wrestling biography written to date.

1 person found this helpful

Narration ruins the story.

Narration ruins the story. Unbearable to listen to. Absolutely awful. Story is good but entirely hindered by the awful reading.

Not a bad book, but the reader stinks

As someone who has become familiar with the legend of Andre the giant, I was anxiously looking forward to enjoying this. Within the first one minute I was immediately annoyed simply by the individual who was assigned to read the book. Something about their voice just irritated me. As I went along eliciting, their mispronunciations of various names just killed off any kind of enjoyment I would have. I returned the book because I’m just gonna buy it and read it

not a wrestling book

the first third of the book is pure statistics, "Andre wrestled this guy this and this place" not very interesting in the first place and certainly not in an Audiobook

then a few Andre stories start to show up, but not many and not anything not told many times before...

the latter part of the book is where the meat of the book is but even this is purely edited and worse told...

the entire book is read in a fairly monotonous voice only changing when doing bad impressions. further Graham haven't bothered to research how names are pronounced leading to some being outright butchered

I cannot recommend this to anyone in audio format and written only if you are looking for specific dates or similar

A wrestling literary masterpiece

This is one of the best researched wrestling biographies I’ve ever come across. A fascinating collection of match results, personal stories, and connections to others stories in the business. What Hébert and Laprade have done here is nothing short of incredible.

The one drawback to this was the narration. It really wasn’t the right fit for a book of this magnitude. The mispronunciations and general lack of knowledge about the wrestling business did stick out to a lifetime wrestling fan.

The book and story are great. But...

The narrator sounded like a World War2 era newscast except when he was reading quotes in which he sounded like a heavy smoker. I understand the importance of needing someone to be able to pronounce French properly but someone should have edited for him or coached. Mispronouncing major wrestling figure names like Bischoff and Jannety as an example and you could tell he had no clue what PPV was or stood for. The bad narration still does not change that it was well written and did a good job showing the human behind the giant.