Before I get into the heart of the content for this Andre The Giant/Otto Wanz match there is just a couple things I wanted to clear up. First, yes I know Otto Wanz was actually born in Austria. However, I couldn’t think of an insanely awful title involving Austria so I thought of one involving Germany. Second, the audio for this match is even more atrocious than the title of this post! As such you might want to either turn the volume down or off completely. Otherwise you might get a minor headache like me.
The reason I included this match despite the sound difficulties was because of the rarity of it. You have the legendary Andre The Giant battling Otto Wanz, a legend in his own right who was big in Europe, but never made it as big stateside. This treasure is taken from the Catch Wrestling Association (CWA) a company that perhaps more often than not split matches into rounds, including this fight. The action is slow given the lumbering beasts involved, but that doesn’t make it a terrible match. It reminds me of Bruno Sammartino in his heyday even though it took place when the Rock ‘n’ Wrestling Connection had already exploded. The high spot of the match predates one of the biggest moments of this era. Otto slams Andre about a year before Hogan did. Otto was not the first to do this, but his did predate the one most commonly talked about as the first slam of Andre.
All of this plus it looks like Andre mouths the words, “I’m the man now” after the match. I like to think Sean Connery saw this match and adapted the line for his legendary performance in 2000.
Categories: Wrestling Clips
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