Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
If you have ever followed the career of Vincent Kennedy McMahon, you would know that Vince always had a love affair with giants. The bigger the wrestler, the better. Over the years, the WWF/WWE have featured wrestlers like Big John Studd, Kurrgan, The Great Khali, the Giant Gonzalez, the Giant Silva, The Big Show and, of course, most importantly Andre the Giant. Today we look at another giant and the brief run of ‘Trapper John’.
Andre was the prize jewel of the McMahon family for many, many years. ‘The eighth wonder of the world’ was first signed exclusively to Vince’s father Vince McMahon Sr, who lent out Andre to various territories and received a percentage of the money that territory earned for his appearances. The WWF was always very protective of their “7’4” giant and naturally Andre was very protective of his own mystique as well. A perfect example of this was Andre’s disdain for fellow “Giant” Big John Studd.
Andre always climbed over the ropes when entering a ring. That was his thing. When Studd was brought into the WWF Studd began doing the same thing. Andre was not pleased and asked John Studd to not climb over the ropes any more. Studd apparently laughed at Andre’s request and continued to climb over the ring ropes, much to the chagrin of Andre. That caused friction between the two for years to come.
It was also rumored that if Andre ever did a taped promo with other wrestlers and those wrestlers were close to Andre in height, McMahon would make Andre stand on a small box to elevate him to look even taller than the other wrestler or wrestlers surrounding him. It was also rumored that Andre would actually wear lifts in his boots when in the ring with guys that were almost equal in size to him.
There wasn’t any question that Andre was a mega star and a lot of that had to do with his sheer presence inside a wrestling ring. By 1984, a man named John Harris entered the world of professional wrestling. ‘Big’ John Harris debuted for Jerry Jarrett’s Continental Wrestling Association based in Memphis, Tennessee. It is believed that John Harris stood about 7’7 tall, but other claimed it was about 7’6 to 7’5. He also weighed in at 475 pounds. His enormous size made him, at the time, the tallest wrestler in the world.
AWA promoter Verne Gagne saw the potential of having a giant that could rival the WWF’s…so Gagne brought Harris in and renamed him ‘Silo Sam.’ While Silo Sam had the height over Andre, he certainly did not have the wrestling skill that Andre had. Silo Sam was slow and lumbering and didn’t have the command presence that Andre had. Silo Sam also lacked any kind of charisma or promo skills.
Despite all of John Harris’ flaws as a professional wrestler, he still stood as the bigger wrestler. That was something that Vince McMahon apparently couldn’t accept. So, Vince McMahon did what he always did and brought the competition to his company. In 1986, John Harris was off to the WWF and repackaged under the name of ‘Trapper John.’ Trapper John had one dark match with the WWF and was never used again. In fact, John remained under the WWF’s payroll for about a year, never used, never brought to the television tapings. All he did was sit home and collect a check.
Some speculated that McMahon never really had any intention of using John Harris as an active member of the WWF roster. It was simply to keep him away from every other promoter. More importantly, it may have had to do with protecting the image of Andre the Giant. Andre had to be the bigger man to Vince and company and, sure enough, he was. John Harris eventually left the WWF and ultimately retired from the wrestling business by 1990.
We all know that John Harris was not a very gifted pro wrestler. Was he held off TV simply because of how bad he was or did the WWF hire John Harris just to hide him from the rest of the wrestling world?
David Fullam
Vince did not need to worry. John may have been taller than Andre, but that was it.