This past week’s episode of the JJ Dillon Show began with a story about the time JJ and Andre the Giant went out for a night on the town in Dallas:
“Anytime that he would come into a territory, I’d always have him in for a home-cooked meal. So Dallas was no different. I said to him, ‘I’ll come down to the hotel, pick you up, you come spend the day with me and – home-cooked meal.’ He loved that. So as dinner was winding down he said, ‘Tonight, after the matches, we go out. My guests.’ ‘Well, you don’t need to do that.’ ‘No, no, no, no,’ he insisted. Where he ended up wanting to go was the Playboy Club in Dallas. So my wife and I go along.
“The Playboy Club was on the second floor of this building. It wasn’t a stand-alone building and there were a couple rooms up there. So to get there, we had to go up a couple stairs and it wasn’t really a huge place. We’re sitting there, we start drinking, and Andre wanted to dance. He grabs my wife by her arm and he scoops her up. She was going to dance whether she wanted to or not, not that she was not flattered that Andre wanted to dance with her.
“So they get up and it was not an air-conditioned building, which kind of surprised me. So Andre’s up dancing and he used to sweat profusely anyway. I just remember it was warm in there. Next thing I know, Andre is unbuttoning his shirt, and he’s perspiring readily, and pretty soon, he peels off the shirt and slings it in the air and flings it back over. The manager of the club comes over. Andre’s having a good time, not bothering anybody, not being disorderly or disruptive. I guess the guy just, here’s a guy on the dance floor without his shirt on, I don’t know what their rules are. But he comes over to me and says ‘You need to tell your friend he’s got to put his shirt back on.’ I said ‘Well, guess what? If it’s that big of an issue, I’m going to designate you to be the one to tell him.’
“The guy just looked at me with this blank stare like, ‘Oh boy, oh crap, I didn’t expect that to be the answer.’ So he puts his tail between his legs, turns away. Andre is just, he loved to dance and would be more on the dance floor than he wasn’t and now his shirt’s off and he’s comfortable and I didn’t see anybody upset by it.
“So a little bit of time goes by and, where my seat was, we were in a separate room and there was a partition, and Andre’s dancing out on the floor with my wife. I never did dance with her the whole night. It was Andre. I had a direct line of sight to the entrance door, and the next thing I know, I see the manager of the club with three uniformed officers step inside the door.
“Now, I can’t hear the conversation, but I can see him pantomiming. You know, ‘Ehh, shirt off…’ And he’s got his arm up two feet over his head as if to say ‘There’s this giant of a man and he took his shirt off and I told him to put his shirt back on.’ The officers are nodding their head and looking at each other. After he had told his whole story, and Andre is still out there dancing, these three officers, looking very official, just walked towards the room where I am and as they round the corner and see who the person is that’s being addressed, they froze, all three of them. Almost like a Three Stooges thing, where the one guy stops and the other two run into him. Andy they’re all standing there looking at Andre, who, again, is not being disruptive and just having a good time and dancing.
“The three of them stand there with their arms crossed and they’re looking at each other and they’re having a very brief, quiet conversation that lasted about 20-30 seconds. They made a U-Turn, went back to the entrance door, and as much as told the owner of the club, ‘He’s not bothering anybody. I don’t want to bother him and I don’t think you should either.’ And they left!
“That was the end of it. Andre stayed out there and had a good time the rest of the night.”
Rush’s Analysis: The theme of the show was actually Dillon’s departure from the WWF in 1995, following McMahon’s return the company on the heels of the infamous steroid trial. Dillon explains his reasons for leaving, the rather terse final conversation he had with McMahon at that time, and even discusses the events surrounding his induction into the WWE Hall Of Fame as part of the Four Horsemen in 2012.
To listen to the entire episode, visit the JJ Dillon Show.
Please credit PWPodcasts.com when using any portion of this transcript.
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