WWE backstage personality reveals painful truth behind Andre the Giant's heartbreaking exit

Bruce Prichard has revealed the heartbreaking fall-out between Vince McMahon and the legendary Andre the Giant prior to Andre's departure from WWE.

Speaking on his Something to Wrestle With podcast, Prichard, a current WWE executive and a long-standing figure on-and-off screen throughout the 80s and 90s, admitted Andre's own apparent reluctance to call time on his career was at the heart of the matter.

He said:

"I think it was time [for Andre to retire], and no one ever wants to admit it's time to hang them up. As bad a shape as Andre was in, there was still a part of him that wanted to perform.

"Vince, loving Andre, [and wanting] to keep the myth of Andre the Giant alive forever, didn't want to put Andre out there less than [100%] - we did that long enough to please Andre.

"Only those two know [why they fell out] but I think that was the gist of it. Andre went on and said 'okay, I'm done' and made his last appearance for the NWA. I think that was germ of it."

Andre is undoubtedly one of wrestling's biggest ever stars, and made his name in WWE in the late 1980s and very early 1990s.

The very first Hall of Famer in WWE faced Hulk Hogan for the then WWF Championship in front of 93,000 at Wrestlemania III, and was regularly at the forefront of the company's storylines.

The Frenchman's crippling health worries and decreasing physical condition, however, meant his in-ring activity began to be curtailed around that time.

Struggling with mobility, Andre would feature more sporadically from the outset of the 90s, until his tragic death from heart failure, aged just 46, in 1993.