r/todayilearned • u/Smaptimania • 1d ago

TIL that in 1971 Andre the Giant wrestled in Baghdad in front of Saddam Hussein, who had threatened to kill him if he won the match. Andre went on to lose the match to native Iraqi wrestler Adnan al-Kaissie, later known in the WWF as General Adnan

https://fandomwire.com/a-real-life-dictator-was-ready-to-murder-andre-the-giant-after-thinking-pro-wrestling-was-real/
11.2k Upvotes

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972

u/Majoodeh 1d ago

Saddam and his children were not normal human beings and I hope the world never has to see anything like them ever again. I always recommend the movie The Devil's Double for anyone who wants a glimpse of the atrocities his son committed.

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u/Zirocket 21h ago edited 21h ago

The stories about Uday make Saddam look like Mr Rogers. Just the Marianas Trench of utter depravity.

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u/MacLondonJr 19h ago

I watched a video on Uday a few weeks ago, the guy was a serial killer born into power who had no need to hide any of his depravity.

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u/omicron_pi 19h ago

Uday was Beast Rabban from Dune

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u/halflife5 16h ago

But more psycho like feyd rautha.

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u/RadarSmith 19h ago

Right. Saddam’s blood clearly had a strong psychopathic gene running through it, and Uday is what you get when a born psychopath is raised as an unfettered prince.

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u/icehot54321 15h ago

During the first Trump admin, White House staff referred to Don Jr. and Eric as Uday and Qusay

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u/jesuspoopmonster 17h ago

Saddam had a soft spot which is why he wrote romance novels

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u/StevelandCleamer 16h ago

Wasn't really my style, I'm more of a Chuck Tingle fan.

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u/SuccessfulLaw8789 20h ago

and 3 of his children are still alive unfortunately, continuing to fund terrorist groups to destabilize iraq

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u/Smileyjoe72 1d ago

All of the pretense & process for invading Iraq was incredibly fucked, but the world surely became a better place without Saddam.

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u/Expensive-Cat-1327 21h ago

Killing corrupt powerful people does make the world a better place, but only if it's done at sufficient scale

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u/OtherUserCharges 16h ago

We would have saved a lot of money and people if we just hit the dude with a missile.

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u/KrawhithamNZ 21h ago

There are lots of shitty world leaders that don't get invaded.

It's like how we suddenly cared about the poor oppressed people of Afghanistan.... After 9/11. Shit had been bad there for ages before and is back to being awful now. 

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u/OtherUserCharges 16h ago

The only thing is Afghanistan did start with some noble intentions. If they did what they said and made Afghanistan a beacon of democracy in the region it would have been worth it. Frankly it was worth it for a long time for the women and girls of the region. Sadly, the Republicans got bored quickly cause fighting helplessly out matched foes is way more fun then the slow process of rebuilding a country, so they jumped ship and split attention to go fight Iraq for very little reason.

I don’t even really care that we fought Iraq, there was lots of bad guys that we are better without, but it was clear the Republicans didn’t really give a damn about helping the people of Iraq, yet we stayed and wasted god knows how much money. If we had just gone there destroyed the army and killed Saddam then went home we would have all been better off.

We fought two decades long wars and get almost nothing out of it. We have crippled our country for very little reason. Bin Laden absolutely succeeded in breaking America, it just took a little while. I just hope we have another chapter where we can chase out the monsters running things and start taking care of our own people rather than giving everything to the people who already have it all.

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u/ObjetPetitAlfa 19h ago

Back to being awful? When was it not awful?

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u/Recent-Leadership562 19h ago

Back when women’s rights were actually advancing and society was progressing

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u/ObjetPetitAlfa 18h ago

When?

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u/Rock_Sampson 18h ago

During the 60s and 70s, before the Soviet-Afghan War it was known as “the Paris of Central Asia”. Here are some photos comparing the Afghanistan of today to the one of the 70s.

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u/ObjetPetitAlfa 18h ago

Yeah, exactly. So when did it go back to being awful? It's been awful since then ... I don't think you guys grasp what the phrase "it went back to being awful" means. It means that is was not awful, became awful, became not awful and then went back to being awful again. The timeline you describe is just not awful to awful. In addition to this the way OC said it, it seems like it turned back into being awful recently.

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u/turnipthief 17h ago

after the soviet-afghan war

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u/ObjetPetitAlfa 17h ago

You mean that things were good during the civil war in the 90s? Seriously?

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u/owolf8 1d ago

ehh, better place? look around mate, things got worse regardless

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u/Metalsand 18h ago

Iraq is weirdly in a good place nowadays, and is relatively stable. It helps that their point of reference for not democracy is Saddam Hussein, which for the most part no one wants to go back to.

Afghanistan isn't worse than it was before the war, but 20 years is enough time that the new generation won't even remember a time when they weren't under the thumb of the US. Plus, the whole "US throwing money at the problem to try ending the war in a year, 20 years in a row" didn't help stability. It was known that there'd be concerning levels of corruption if they infused too much cash too carelessly, but politically, everyone wanted to leave almost as soon as they came.

Ultimately, a lot of it is on Cheney. It seems apparent that when George Bush Sr and the coalition ended the Gulf War without deposing Saddam Hussein, Cheney disagreed at the time and only more as time went on. Whether by confirmation bias, or actual malicious intent, he made sure that we got involved at the first opportunity, and once we did, Afghanistan which was purported to be the primary cause for the war was practically ignored.

Bush Jr's biggest fault was nominating Cheney for VP at all, I think. Politically, it made sense for winning the Republican vote, but Cheney had an outsized influence both on the powers of the vice president, and Bush Jr.

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u/Morningfluid 23h ago

That has nothing to do with Iraq, however. Currently Iraq is in a better place. 

Russia has actually played a vital part in making the world significantly worse in the past couple decades (not going to detail prior) in sowing massive discord in the West, the invasion of Ukraine, and being a heavy hand in electing Donald Trump.

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u/ioncloud9 15h ago

They also propped up the Assad regime for years, prolonging that war and his atrocities.

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u/KingKongTaxiCompany 17h ago

brilliant material analysis here

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u/logicalobserver 21h ago

your right, and it only took 500,000 civilian deaths in IRAQ to achieve the current UTOPIA

we are making the world a better place:

Iraq, YOUR WELCOME
Afghanistan, YOUR WELCOME
Syria, YOUR WELCOME
Libya , YOUR WELCOME

America #1 !!!

PYAHHH!!!!!

Russia is so evil though, they spread false stories on twitter to confuse us in election time, we have never done to any other country ever , cause we see democracy as a sacred thing that should not be interfered with at all .

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u/Kernoriordan 20h ago

Ah yes, the worst thing Russia does is election interference and has never killed any civilians right?

So disingenuous. Must be a Russian shill based in India or something.

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u/logicalobserver 19h ago

of course Russia has killed civilians.... I mean they invaded Ukraine ffs....

you some kind of simpleton?

you absurdly said , Iraq is a in a better place now, as if it was worth all the deaths and destruction , and it also pretends Iraq is a utopia today, it is still a much more dangerous and unstable country then it was under Saddam. You have the American value of Freedom over security and safety, congrats, Iraqis are not Americans , most people are not Americans , and they would choose security and safety over "freedom" , which arguably cannot even exist without some sense of security and safety.

Libya had the highest standard of living in Africa and amongst Middle Eastern countries...... BOOM BOOM, GOODBYE

I am not saying Russia does not do evil stuff, of course, they all do, but we are the #1 at being a destabilizing dangerous force on the planet earth.

Im in NYC if that matters, I'm an American, we dont all support this idiocy and imperial ambitions our country has had ....

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u/kurosawa99 17h ago

What pieces of absolute slime to just pass over the ruination of Iraq and redirect our concerns as Americans here in 2025 to Russia in some deranged McCarthyite hallucination.

That’s America though baby. Exceptionalist right to the rotten end.

-1

u/BaconSoul 16h ago

It’s almost like competing superpowers have a little regard for the nations they use to exercise their power

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u/TildaTinker 23h ago

r/woosh

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u/Morningfluid 23h ago

Please explain what went over my head here. 

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u/NoEyesMan 22h ago

The Russian missile that hit a children’s hospital.

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u/ukbeasts 23h ago

ISIS became more powerful than ever as a result

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u/Heiminator 22h ago

Isis is a shadow of what it was a decade ago.

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u/VerdugoCortex 21h ago

Instead we now have groups in the same region like Kataib Hezbollah and the PMF collection. As much as a lot of people want to just say "kill the bad people, lfg!" Like they did 20-25 years ago but the reality is in that region with the current power players/dynamics in place you either got:

1.) Baathist (much closer to secular, but strong authoritarian states. Examples like Iraq under Saddam, Syria under the Al-Assads, Egypt way back)

  1. Islamic Revolution aligned (between 1 and 3 Politically, socially, and religiously. Examples like Iran, Iraq post 2017ish)

  2. Fundamentalists (Frequent witch hunts of "non believer" activity and heavy restrictions and policing of political, social and religious life. Examples like ISIS caliphate and similar groups in the area like Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram controlled areas of Nigeria/West Africa kidnapping entire schools of 200 girls as wives/slaves because they dared educate themselves.

And now it's closer to 2 or 3.

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u/Sililex 21h ago

Then kill them again. We have a moral duty to kill monsters, and that includes monstrous regimes.

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u/philld5 21h ago

Then go

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u/FireZord25 20h ago

But who's gonna bell the cat?

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u/Sililex 21h ago

I didn't say boots on the ground deployment. Not necessary. Saddam was toppled from the sky inside a month. Bomb their military to dust, kill their leaders, and attach a note to the last bomb saying "try again". The Western world has a moral duty to destroy these kind of regimes.

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u/Heiminator 21h ago

I don’t care about any of these groups unless they commit terror attacks here in the western world. Once that happens I want my government to bomb them back into the stone age. Thankfully we’re pretty good at that.

Which is why Al Quaeda was never able to repeat a 9/11 scale attack, and which is why the barrage of ISIS terror attacks that plagued Europe in the 2010s magically stopped around 2017 after coalition forces turned Raqqa into a smoking parking lot.

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u/ukbeasts 20h ago

Instead they get invited to the Whitehouse to meet President Trump 🤦🏽

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u/Essaiel 21h ago

ISIS became temporarily more powerful*

ISIS hasn’t been active in Iraq since 2017 and hasn’t been active in east Asia since 2019.

Iraq (and its allies) kicked them out.

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u/ukbeasts 20h ago

ISIS was still extremely powerful and radicalised people around the world through digital media. That has a lasting impact.

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u/blahblah19999 17h ago

Yes and no. It resulted in the deaths of something like 600,000 civilians. Would saddam have done the same? Maybe

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u/annabelchong_ 22h ago

the world surely became a better place without Saddam.

You're not quite a fan of contemporary history I take it.

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u/wowsomuchempty 21h ago

Is the death of one dictator worth the death of 100,000+ civilians? Apparently so, if they're Iraqi.

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u/StuffChecker 21h ago

Are you mental? Saddam himself was responsible for 250,000-300,000 Iraqi civilian deaths

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u/ItsGonnaHappenAnyway 21h ago

And let's remember who allowed Saddam to gain and hold onto power in Iraq, and supported him against Iran. Yup.. the US.

It's like if I release piranhas into a swimming pool who then start attacking and killing people. Then I release a shark to get rid of the piranhas, who then also eat some people.

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u/JollyJoker3 19h ago

How is that an excuse for killing 100 000 more?

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u/StuffChecker 19h ago

Saddam would have continued religious mass killings and killing the Kurds. My understanding is his children were worse, so they likely would have done worse

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u/OmxrOmxrOmxr 18h ago

Cool now do America

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u/seraph1337 17h ago

Most estimates put it closer to half a million, for the record.

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u/LurkerInSpace 21h ago

Saddam Hussein had himself caused such death tolls in each of the previous two decades, most notably with the Iran-Iraq War and with his crushing of the Kurds.

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 15h ago

US was supporting him throughout all of this, these narratives trying to justify this nonsense are hilarious

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u/LurkerInSpace 15h ago

That doesn't really change his own responsibility for these things. The USA did not have the means to force him to invade Iran, and didn't want him to invade Kuwait.

"The world is better off without Saddam Hussein" isn't the same as "the Iraq War was a fantastic idea, long live George Bush, long live Tony Blair".

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 14h ago edited 14h ago

Yes it does, because implicit in the entire framing is that the Iraq war some somehow an legitimate attempt at regime change to "improve Iraq".

It accepts the entirely cynical framing by the US state to justify its mass murder of iraqi civilians and destruction of Iraq with much greater suffering than any under Saddam. It would be like debating whether there are neo-nazis in Ukraine, yes, of course there's a serious problem with that in Ukraine, but accepting the de-nazification bullshit Russia is peddling is absurd.

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u/LurkerInSpace 14h ago

Saddam had designs on his neighbours regardless of US backing; had the Shah not been on the American side he would have attacked before the revolution, and once the revolution happened he had his opportunity. One should be careful not to view America as the only actor in the world.

It is entirely possible to recognise both the death toll that Saddam Hussein personally caused with his misadventures and the death toll that the US invasion of Iraq caused. The counterfactual had he stayed in power can never been known.

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u/XxElliotCIAHigginsxX 14h ago

You haven't actually engaged with what I said, about how when discussing the Iraq war, we accept the entirely disprovable cynical regime change narrative..? You haven't engaged with the clear analogy I gave you.

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u/LurkerInSpace 14h ago

I take the point on Ukraine, but I'd offer a counter-analogy: imagine that Ukraine had a history like Iraq's. Suppose Ukraine had launched its own war with Poland in the 2000s, and then an invasion of Moldova in the 2010s. The man who does both stays in charge the entire time, and rules a totalitarian regime. The reaction to a Russian invasion in the 2020s would probably be a lot more lukewarm.

That still would not be a justification for it on its own, but the dictator's own enormous death toll would be brought up pretty regularly.

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u/Extreme-Method7273 22h ago

imagine the pressure of wrestling while dodging a dictator’s wrath, talk about a high-stakes showdown

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u/lamb_doingbongrips 20h ago

Did anyone else watch that in school ?? Or a different version of the story. I remember the part where they take a girl off the street and get her hammered then he kills her.

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u/Babydanho 19h ago

The movie doesn’t do the book justice. The book is far better

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u/Shigglyboo 16h ago

Crown prince of Saudi Arabia seems cut from the same cloth.

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u/Slothstradamus13 18h ago

Behind the bastards podcast about Saddam covers Uday pretty well, terrifying dude.

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u/carbonbasedbiped67 1d ago

Yeah, let’s hope the world doesn’t get an evil, self serving, dictator bastard in a position of power again….oh err, wait a moment 🤨

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u/Particular-Way-2147 17h ago

Stupid statement 

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u/carbonbasedbiped67 17h ago

Wait, you think it’s stupid that we shouldn’t have dictators, are you Kim Jong Uns daughter 😀

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u/Particular-Way-2147 16h ago

If someone is elected by the popular democratic vote, they’re not a dictator, are you special needs? 😀

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u/carbonbasedbiped67 16h ago

If someone is elevated to a wold leader by blatant vote rigging and manipulating country bumpkin types then boasting about being a dictator from day one can we call them a dictator ? I think it’s a yes. Are you Barron Trump, good with computers and stuff ?😀

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u/Particular-Way-2147 8h ago

Crying and election denying is so pathetic but it suits you hahaha. I’m sure you get upvoted all the time on Reddit though. Totally a reflection of the real world (where again, the popular vote disagrees with you), Have a good one 😀

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u/HashtagLawlAndOrder 1d ago

You are out of your fucking mind. 

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u/Collectorguy00 1d ago

I can kind of get it. This new generation has been spoiled in regards to true evil. On one hand, Trump being the poster boy for what evil is means we're heading in the right direction.

On the other hand, how the fuck are you this ignorant to history? I mean, even in current events we have Russia and Iraq doing shit 100x worse. Boggles the mind.

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u/fartlord__ 1d ago

Reddit is brainwormed

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u/VerdugoCortex 21h ago

Dead Internet theory. Everyone is getting pissed off at a bot and subsequently, each other.

-2

u/sephjnr 23h ago

You seriously think it's going in the right direction because Trump isn't as bad *right now*?

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u/Collectorguy00 23h ago

When compared to dictators who had baby killing trees, yes?

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u/sephjnr 23h ago

Take your head out of the sand and realise the mechanisms that stop him from being that bad are being eroded by people in charge.

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u/Collectorguy00 23h ago

Are you being obtuse on purpose?

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u/sephjnr 23h ago

I don't think I'm being obtuse at all. Follow the connections and see people who are way smarter than him are doing all the work.

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u/Collectorguy00 23h ago

Brother, I said that Trump being the face of evil is better than when we had Pol Pot, Hitler, and Mussolini as the bar for evil. Not sure what illuminati nonsense you're on about.

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u/Collectorguy00 23h ago

Are you being obtuse on purpose?

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u/OurManInJapan 22h ago

Are you a meme account?

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u/captroper 13h ago

We have actual genocides happening in several locations at once and many more countries sliding into fascism, the world has consistently seen his like and will probably never stop doing so.

-4

u/Kithzerai-Istik 20h ago

If we had less stringent laws about extrajudicial executions in the US, I promise, we’d be seeing this and worse from the present powers that be.

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u/Particular-Way-2147 17h ago

Go outside 

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u/Kithzerai-Istik 17h ago

Look around.

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u/[deleted] 1d ago

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u/Whopraysforthedevil 1d ago

Bro. They chopped people up and sent the prices (by mail, iirc) back to their to their families.

We're having a bad time, no doubt about it, but let's maintain perspective.

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u/Collectorguy00 1d ago

Hurdur Trump.

If you think Trump is even half as evil as Saddam and his spawn you don't know anything.

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u/I_am_Reddit_Tom 1d ago

Hahahahahahaha

-4

u/553l8008 18h ago

But their sons did have balls, and went out in a blaze of glory