There are a handful of drinking stories that land somewhere in between widely accepted fact and urban legend. There’s Hall of Fame third baseman Wade Boggs drinking 107 beers in one day, 64 of them on a cross-country flight:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5bI1UPu2MI
There’s Andre the Giant also drinking 107 beers:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s0X8RlfPbM
But there are lesser known, equally deserving men in the history of drinking, one of whom is named Bill Werbeniuk. Don’t worry, I hadn’t heard of him either.
William Alexander “Bill” Werbeniuk, born January 14, 1947 was (RIP) a Canadian professional snooker (snukes?) and pool player. As Wikipedia GLORIOUSLY states, Weberniuk was recognizable for his “girth” (top five words ever), earning himself the nickname “Big Bill.” As it goes, Werbeniuk, who checked in at a rotund 280 pounds, was down 30 pints of beer a day at his peak, drinking up to 50 on his good days.
via The Telegraph:
Werbeniuk’s 25-stone bulk, and his intake of alcohol, became – unfairly – his most prominent characteristics in the minds of the public. But those were, by any standards, extraordinary – although not solely through adherence to the game’s dissolute image. Werbeniuk suffered from an hereditary nervous disease (or so he and his doctors claimed) which caused his hands to shake. The only solution which allowed him to participate in his trade was drink.
Werbeniuk would have outclassed any amateur drinker, however. “I’d down six to eight pints of lager before I started,” he said. “Then I’d have one pint a frame. Obviously, over the longer matches I’d get through quite a lot of lager but I managed to burn off alcohol very quickly.” In one match, against the British player Nigel Bond, in January 1990, Werbeniuk downed 28 pints of lager and 16 whiskies over the course of 11 frames. (Bond won 10-1.)
Playing in Australia, he and the English player John Spencer took the prize money from all the other competitors at £10 a point after the tournament. “Then we carried on from noon until 7am.” Werbeniuk drank 76 cans of lager during the game.
And if that doesn’t do it for you, the man has an entire “Alcohol Consumption” section on his Wikipedia page:
Unfortunately, Big Bill died in 2003 at the age of 54, but his drinking game will live on as a legend.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgBfkjkpZcc
