I grew up watching wrestling with my older brother. I don’t remember the year we started watching but my mom grew up a fan and my dad seemed to enjoy it a bit as well. The Saturday Night Main Event from WWF was when we’d see some really good matches and follow our favorite wrestlers. As a young kid, how could I not get into a 30 man Battle Royal with monsters inside the squared circle all trying to throw everybody over the top rope to the floor?
While I loved the matches, it was the characters, storylines, and interviews that I enjoyed the most. Some wrestlers were really good on the technical side with their wrestling but not as good on the mic. That was alright though because that’s when you’d team up with a manager to help hype you up. While managers like Bobby “The Brain” Heenan and the “Mouth of the South” Jimmy Hart were top tier managers, they didn’t have the swag of my main man Slick. Wrestling, at that time, still carried a ton of cultural appropriation themes if you watch today but what I always saw was a bunch of guys having a good time and playing up the story all in good fun. I have no idea what went on behind the scenes here but this was my view as a kid. I saw people of all ethnicities, shapes, and sizes entertaining very large crowds with exciting performances.
We practiced wrestling moves, tuned in to every show, bought the cards, and gobbled up any action figures we could find. We still have the ring too which is pretty dope! Wrestling slid right in our hobbies and how could it not with interviews like this.
Andre the Giant was known as the 8th Wonder of the World and while he was aging quickly in the WWF, he was still an intimidating presence. The dude was just an absolute monster who stood 7’4” which you just didn’t see around that time. We had Manute Bol hooping in the league at 7’7” but he wasn’t intimidating at all. But Andre? Nobody wanted a piece of him.
There are so many great stories about Andre the Giant and I thought that Bill Simmons’ nailed it with his 30 for 30 ESPN documentary on the 8th Wonder of the World. Andre was a superhero to me and when he was on TV, we watched without blinking an eye. And we were also chasing his cards… For me, it was more in the 1987 Topps Wrestling set. Andre’s cards in that set were simple yet effective. I’m a beast, don’t mess with me. I will crush you. Monster sh*t!
As I got older, I fell a little bit out of touch with wrestling. In high school, I didn’t watch WWE much as I was a loyal ECW fan where I’d set my alarm at 2am on a weekday so I could catch the ECW syndicated show. Sometimes it aired, other times it didn’t. But when it was on? Absolutely loved it. But I did still have those old school WWF characters in my head. Maybe it was because of my age at the time but those guys were great.
Around 1996 or 1997, I started seeing stickers of Andre the Giant here in San Diego. All the stickers said was “Andre the Giant Has a Posse” with artwork of his face in black and white. Internet wasn’t a viable solution at this time so these stickers just made me think. What was this promoting? Was it some kind of new gang? Who was his posse? How could I get these stickers? How could I join the posse? I needed to know more and couldn’t find a damn thing.
The more I went to hip hop shows, the more I would see these stickers. Then I started to seeing the bigger pieces that were getting put up with wheat paste so that they couldn’t easily be pulled down by the county. I was so fascinated by it all. Some of my friends wrote graffiti and tagged the city up and while I tried to refine my letters for my graf time in the lifht, my alter ego as Merk never truly took off. Looking back, I should have started the Merk brand right there but I didn’t know anything about how to build a brand.
Through word of mouth, I found out more about these Andre stickers. It was from a brand called Obey and the mastermind behind it all was Shepard Fairey. Shepard Fairey is now known globally but it wasn’t always like that. Even when he started really bubbling, you could still pick up limited edition prints off of his website for good prices. One of my biggest regrets from back in the day was that I got outbid on the Jimi print below. I almost won it for $88. I went to eBay to see what they’re currently going for and you can’t find any anywhere. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that this numbered print is worth $5K minimum.
I started buying Obey prints on eBay and still own 3 to this day. I have the Bones Bridage one, the J Dilla one, and the Black Sabbath (Orange) one. Love all of them! But when I see these prints, and every time I see the Obey brand, I can’t help but go back to my high school days when I first saw those Andre stickers everywhere. It helped me fall in love with street art which didn’t just have to be graffiti. And the fact that Shepard chose Andre as his main guy really spoke to me since I adored the sport of professional wrestling since I was a child.
Today would have been Andre the Giant’s 75th birthday. In celebration of his big birthday, I asked the my big bro and renowned card artist LunchMade to create some artwork that tied in our love of old school wrasslin’ along with some Obey street art elements as the two go hand-in-hand. What came out of all of this is great. A solid front and back which picks up different elements and solid layering along the way. I supplied LunchMade with the concept and he ran with the rest. If you dig this kind of 1/1 art, this card is currently up on eBay for the next week. I have a good feeling that this is going to do really well.
The card art movement is real y’all. Lots of dope artists flexing some of their cool ideas to create that fire. I’ll ask my bro who all of the card art legends are so he can provide a list for all of you to follow. In the meantime, I’m gonna go back to staring at this fresh Andre card!
