http://www.si.com/extra-mustard/2015/03/24/randy-macho-man-savage-wwe-hall-of-fame
It was just after 9 p.m. on March 20, 1994, and the greatest ladder match in pro wrestling history had just concluded. The two combatants, Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon (née Scott Hall), limped backstage after 25 minutes in the ring. There hadn’t been many ladder matches—in which an item (in this case a championship belt) is suspended above the ring and the winner is the wrestler who climbs a ladder and retrieves it—up to that point. “Extreme” wrestling was in its infancy and jumping off the top rope was still considered a big deal. Not only had Michaels and Ramon used the ladder in ways never before seen, but they had also done so at WrestleMania, the biggest event of the year. One by one, wrestlers in the locker room approached the duo to congratulate them on the match. All except one, that is.
Randy (Macho Man) Savage was furious. Yes, Savage agreed, it had been a great match. But Ramon and Michaels had also used more time than they were supposed to. This meant that the next match—a 10-man tag—had to be cut from the card. It also meant that the 10 wrestlers who had been scheduled to fight would not receive a check on the biggest payday of the year. This was too much for Savage to take.
“First of all,” Savage told Ramon as he walked backstage through the curtain, “I want to say that was a great match. Second of all, I want to say you’re both very selfish.”
“ ‘Mach’ told his truth,” Ramon says. “He wouldn’t say it behind your back. He’d walk up and say it right to you. Shawn and I were both nodding the whole time he spoke. All I could say was, ‘You’re right.’ ”
Whether he was sticking up for his fellow wrestlers or stealing the show in front of 93,000 fans, Savage was one of the most important pro wrestling figures of the last 50 years. But personal feuds and a promise to his family had prevented him from receiving wrestling’s highest honor—induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. That will change on Saturday when Savage, who died at age 58 of cardiac arrhythmia in May 2011, finally gets his place among the top stars of all time. But now that the Macho Man is set to be enshrined, two pressing questions still linger: Who, exactly, was he? And why did it take so long for wrestling to honor him?
The Early Years
Photo: Courtesy of the Poffo Family
Randall Mario Poffo was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 15, 1952, and raised by his parents, Angelo and Judy. Angelo played collegiate baseball and wrestled as an amateur. He also did a short stint in the Navy, setting the world record for consecutive sit-ups by doing 6,033 in four hours and ten minutes. He wanted to play professional baseball, but couldn’t cut it. A friend recommended that he try pro wrestling, a vocation Angelo pursued for the next three decades. The two Poffo boys fell in love with their dad’s line of work. Like Randy, Lanny Poffo also wrestled in the WWE, under the moniker of "the Genius."
“The boys always wanted to be part of wrestling,” says Judy, who’s now 88. “They used to practice as if they were being interviewed on TV when they were kids. After all those years of practicing, the first time Randy was interviewed he was so nervous. All he could say to the announcer was, ‘Thank you very much.’ ”
Though only 25 months older than Lanny, Randy embraced his role as a big brother, especially when the boys’ dad was off wrestling.
“Randy was like having a second father,” Lanny says. “Our parents were products of the Great Depression. They made their own way in this world. Our dad used to always say, ‘Success is not an accident.’ Randy believed in that.”
Savage's first love was baseball—he worked his way into the minor league systems of the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox between 1971 and ’75—but never rose above Class A ball. He started as an outfielder before finding his niche as a catcher. His career was nearly derailed after a home plate collision in ’73 left his right shoulder badly damaged. The righthander could barely throw after the injury, so Savage trained himself to throw lefty by hurling a baseball against a wall a thousand times a day. While his dedication did not translate to a big-league call up, it did catch the eye of a baseball legend.
“Randy was a super athlete,” says Pete Rose, a spring-training teammate of Savage’s in 1974. “He was very limber, flexible, so it didn’t surprise me he was a pretty good baseball player.”
Despite Savage’s desire, the truth was unavoidable—Class A ballplayers with a lifetime batting average of .254 don’t play in the major leagues.
“Randy had put his whole life into baseball,” Judy says. “When he got released for the last time, he was devastated. He broke all his bats and his equipment.”
With his baseball career behind him, the 6'1", 195-pound Savage turned to the family business. The only problem was his size, or lack of it.
“Wrestlers in the 1970s consisted of some very horrible looking men,” Lanny says. “Randy was a muscle man in baseball, but considered very skinny as a wrestler.”
While Savage worked on his physique, he learned the nuances of pro wrestling from veteran grappler Harley Race.
Photo: Courtesy of the Poffo Family
Angelo Poffo, Lanny Poffo, Randy Savage and Buddy Roberts
“I knew Randy right from day one when he started wrestling,” says Race, a longtime friend of Savage’s father. “I helped him put together that image of the Macho Man. He had a way about him. He grabbed your attention through his voice. That allowed him to present himself as a type of a character. He and Angelo were both great, but his dad couldn’t talk like him. That got Randy over with the people.”
After training with Race for a few years, the former baseball player had the skills and the body to be successful in the ring. He still needed a strong identity.
“His name was conjured up by some promoter,” says longtime wrestling broadcaster “Mean” Gene Okerlund. “Poffo sounded a little soft. But he thought Randy fought like a savage. Hence ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage.”
And with that, a star was born.
Introduction To Pro Wrestling
Photo: Courtesy of the Poffo Family
Randy Savage and Lanny Poffo
In 1978, three years after Savage retired from baseball, Angelo started a new wrestling circuit in Lexington, Ky., called International Championship Wrestling. Unlike rival organizations, however, ICW was not a member of the powerful National Wrestling Alliance. Therefore, the group was dubbed an “outlaw” promotion within the industry.
“The Poffos had a promotion that was going against the one run by Jerry (the King) Lawlerand Jerry Jarrett ... known as the Continental Wrestling Association,” says Jimmy (Mouth of the South) Hart. “When [ICW wrestlers] came into [the CWA’s hometown of] Memphis, they would do their interviews challenging us. But Jarrett’s motto was always, ‘Don’t say anything about our opposition. If we don’t talk about them, pretty soon they’ll go out of business.’ ”
The ICW folded in 1984 and a frustrated Savage needed work. His time in ICW had angered many promoters and his future looked bleak. He penned an apology letter to Lawler, saying: “In all due respect, you have a great product. We tried to come in and do something that was unethical at the time and it didn’t work. If you could ever use us, we’re available.”
Hart still remembers sitting in Lawler’s kitchen reading Savage’s apology.
“Lawler had originally planned a main event for the next week between the Road Warriors and The Fabulous Ones,” he said. “But we just had to change that. I said, ‘King, with you and Savage main-eventing, this card will be a sell-out.’ Jerry agreed and reached out to Randy.”
Savage’s migration to Lawler’s CWA culminated with a grudge match between the two at Kentucky’s Rupp Arena.
“The first time we worked together, when it was ‘promotion against promotion,’ we sold out at the arena with 23,000 people,” Lawler says. “That was unheard of in wrestling. But Randy was so cool. He was a great athlete, and he was a little bit out there. He had a bit of a temper, and he was moody at times, but he was his own guy. I really grew to respect him.”
Savage’s work with Lawler still resonates within the wrestling community, particularly with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
“Macho Man, that guy’s stuff back when he was in Tennessee, was incredible,” Austin says. “His intensity, his promo style—he was the Macho Man 24/7, 365—and he was that before he got to the WWF. Vince [McMahon] didn’t make him, he made himself. Vince then made him a superstar all over the world.”
By the time Savage was 32, McMahon and his front office asked Hart—whom they had recently poached from the CWA—to bring the Macho Man to the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment).
“I managed Randy and his father Angelo in Memphis,” Hart says. “Then I left to go to New York. [Author’s note: Signing with the Connecticut-based WWE is referred to in wrestling circles as going to New York.] I had only been working for Vince for about three months and I was heading for a short trip back home to Memphis. The office said to me, ‘Jimmy, do us a favor. We saw these tapes on Randy Savage. Can you call him when you’re back home?’ When I called Lawler’s promotion and asked to speak with Randy, they needed to know why I was calling.”
The call needed to be handled delicately. McMahon had been pilfering the best talent from wrestling territories all over the nation and promoters had stopped accepting calls from his office. But Hart, one of the greatest wrestling managers of all time, knew how to handle the situation. Wrestling managers constantly bend rules and cheat to win, and this instance was no different. So, naturally, he lied.
“Randy was selling some kind of vitamin,” Hart says. “I called and told them I had somebody who wanted to buy $150 worth of [the stuff], so they put Randy on the phone right away.”
As soon as Savage answered, Hart explained the real reason behind the call.
“I said, ‘I got to be honest with you—Vince saw your tapes and wants to know if you want to come to New York,’ ” Hart says. “Randy said to me, ‘Brother, I’ll meet you over on Summer Avenue in 15 minutes.’ He jumped in his car to meet me, I gave him the [WWF] phone number and the rest was history.”
It was just after 9 p.m. on March 20, 1994, and the greatest ladder match in pro wrestling history had just concluded. The two combatants, Shawn Michaels and Razor Ramon (née Scott Hall), limped backstage after 25 minutes in the ring. There hadn’t been many ladder matches—in which an item (in this case a championship belt) is suspended above the ring and the winner is the wrestler who climbs a ladder and retrieves it—up to that point. “Extreme” wrestling was in its infancy and jumping off the top rope was still considered a big deal. Not only had Michaels and Ramon used the ladder in ways never before seen, but they had also done so at WrestleMania, the biggest event of the year. One by one, wrestlers in the locker room approached the duo to congratulate them on the match. All except one, that is.
Randy (Macho Man) Savage was furious. Yes, Savage agreed, it had been a great match. But Ramon and Michaels had also used more time than they were supposed to. This meant that the next match—a 10-man tag—had to be cut from the card. It also meant that the 10 wrestlers who had been scheduled to fight would not receive a check on the biggest payday of the year. This was too much for Savage to take.
“First of all,” Savage told Ramon as he walked backstage through the curtain, “I want to say that was a great match. Second of all, I want to say you’re both very selfish.”
“ ‘Mach’ told his truth,” Ramon says. “He wouldn’t say it behind your back. He’d walk up and say it right to you. Shawn and I were both nodding the whole time he spoke. All I could say was, ‘You’re right.’ ”
Whether he was sticking up for his fellow wrestlers or stealing the show in front of 93,000 fans, Savage was one of the most important pro wrestling figures of the last 50 years. But personal feuds and a promise to his family had prevented him from receiving wrestling’s highest honor—induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. That will change on Saturday when Savage, who died at age 58 of cardiac arrhythmia in May 2011, finally gets his place among the top stars of all time. But now that the Macho Man is set to be enshrined, two pressing questions still linger: Who, exactly, was he? And why did it take so long for wrestling to honor him?
The Early Years
Photo: Courtesy of the Poffo Family
Randall Mario Poffo was born in Columbus, Ohio, on Nov. 15, 1952, and raised by his parents, Angelo and Judy. Angelo played collegiate baseball and wrestled as an amateur. He also did a short stint in the Navy, setting the world record for consecutive sit-ups by doing 6,033 in four hours and ten minutes. He wanted to play professional baseball, but couldn’t cut it. A friend recommended that he try pro wrestling, a vocation Angelo pursued for the next three decades. The two Poffo boys fell in love with their dad’s line of work. Like Randy, Lanny Poffo also wrestled in the WWE, under the moniker of "the Genius."
“The boys always wanted to be part of wrestling,” says Judy, who’s now 88. “They used to practice as if they were being interviewed on TV when they were kids. After all those years of practicing, the first time Randy was interviewed he was so nervous. All he could say to the announcer was, ‘Thank you very much.’ ”
Though only 25 months older than Lanny, Randy embraced his role as a big brother, especially when the boys’ dad was off wrestling.
“Randy was like having a second father,” Lanny says. “Our parents were products of the Great Depression. They made their own way in this world. Our dad used to always say, ‘Success is not an accident.’ Randy believed in that.”
Savage's first love was baseball—he worked his way into the minor league systems of the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox between 1971 and ’75—but never rose above Class A ball. He started as an outfielder before finding his niche as a catcher. His career was nearly derailed after a home plate collision in ’73 left his right shoulder badly damaged. The righthander could barely throw after the injury, so Savage trained himself to throw lefty by hurling a baseball against a wall a thousand times a day. While his dedication did not translate to a big-league call up, it did catch the eye of a baseball legend.
“Randy was a super athlete,” says Pete Rose, a spring-training teammate of Savage’s in 1974. “He was very limber, flexible, so it didn’t surprise me he was a pretty good baseball player.”
Despite Savage’s desire, the truth was unavoidable—Class A ballplayers with a lifetime batting average of .254 don’t play in the major leagues.
“Randy had put his whole life into baseball,” Judy says. “When he got released for the last time, he was devastated. He broke all his bats and his equipment.”
With his baseball career behind him, the 6'1", 195-pound Savage turned to the family business. The only problem was his size, or lack of it.
“Wrestlers in the 1970s consisted of some very horrible looking men,” Lanny says. “Randy was a muscle man in baseball, but considered very skinny as a wrestler.”
While Savage worked on his physique, he learned the nuances of pro wrestling from veteran grappler Harley Race.
Photo: Courtesy of the Poffo Family
Angelo Poffo, Lanny Poffo, Randy Savage and Buddy Roberts
“I knew Randy right from day one when he started wrestling,” says Race, a longtime friend of Savage’s father. “I helped him put together that image of the Macho Man. He had a way about him. He grabbed your attention through his voice. That allowed him to present himself as a type of a character. He and Angelo were both great, but his dad couldn’t talk like him. That got Randy over with the people.”
After training with Race for a few years, the former baseball player had the skills and the body to be successful in the ring. He still needed a strong identity.
“His name was conjured up by some promoter,” says longtime wrestling broadcaster “Mean” Gene Okerlund. “Poffo sounded a little soft. But he thought Randy fought like a savage. Hence ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage.”
And with that, a star was born.
Introduction To Pro Wrestling
Photo: Courtesy of the Poffo Family
Randy Savage and Lanny Poffo
In 1978, three years after Savage retired from baseball, Angelo started a new wrestling circuit in Lexington, Ky., called International Championship Wrestling. Unlike rival organizations, however, ICW was not a member of the powerful National Wrestling Alliance. Therefore, the group was dubbed an “outlaw” promotion within the industry.
“The Poffos had a promotion that was going against the one run by Jerry (the King) Lawlerand Jerry Jarrett ... known as the Continental Wrestling Association,” says Jimmy (Mouth of the South) Hart. “When [ICW wrestlers] came into [the CWA’s hometown of] Memphis, they would do their interviews challenging us. But Jarrett’s motto was always, ‘Don’t say anything about our opposition. If we don’t talk about them, pretty soon they’ll go out of business.’ ”
The ICW folded in 1984 and a frustrated Savage needed work. His time in ICW had angered many promoters and his future looked bleak. He penned an apology letter to Lawler, saying: “In all due respect, you have a great product. We tried to come in and do something that was unethical at the time and it didn’t work. If you could ever use us, we’re available.”
Hart still remembers sitting in Lawler’s kitchen reading Savage’s apology.
“Lawler had originally planned a main event for the next week between the Road Warriors and The Fabulous Ones,” he said. “But we just had to change that. I said, ‘King, with you and Savage main-eventing, this card will be a sell-out.’ Jerry agreed and reached out to Randy.”
Savage’s migration to Lawler’s CWA culminated with a grudge match between the two at Kentucky’s Rupp Arena.
“The first time we worked together, when it was ‘promotion against promotion,’ we sold out at the arena with 23,000 people,” Lawler says. “That was unheard of in wrestling. But Randy was so cool. He was a great athlete, and he was a little bit out there. He had a bit of a temper, and he was moody at times, but he was his own guy. I really grew to respect him.”
Savage’s work with Lawler still resonates within the wrestling community, particularly with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin.
“Macho Man, that guy’s stuff back when he was in Tennessee, was incredible,” Austin says. “His intensity, his promo style—he was the Macho Man 24/7, 365—and he was that before he got to the WWF. Vince [McMahon] didn’t make him, he made himself. Vince then made him a superstar all over the world.”
By the time Savage was 32, McMahon and his front office asked Hart—whom they had recently poached from the CWA—to bring the Macho Man to the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment).
“I managed Randy and his father Angelo in Memphis,” Hart says. “Then I left to go to New York. [Author’s note: Signing with the Connecticut-based WWE is referred to in wrestling circles as going to New York.] I had only been working for Vince for about three months and I was heading for a short trip back home to Memphis. The office said to me, ‘Jimmy, do us a favor. We saw these tapes on Randy Savage. Can you call him when you’re back home?’ When I called Lawler’s promotion and asked to speak with Randy, they needed to know why I was calling.”
The call needed to be handled delicately. McMahon had been pilfering the best talent from wrestling territories all over the nation and promoters had stopped accepting calls from his office. But Hart, one of the greatest wrestling managers of all time, knew how to handle the situation. Wrestling managers constantly bend rules and cheat to win, and this instance was no different. So, naturally, he lied.
“Randy was selling some kind of vitamin,” Hart says. “I called and told them I had somebody who wanted to buy $150 worth of [the stuff], so they put Randy on the phone right away.”
As soon as Savage answered, Hart explained the real reason behind the call.
“I said, ‘I got to be honest with you—Vince saw your tapes and wants to know if you want to come to New York,’ ” Hart says. “Randy said to me, ‘Brother, I’ll meet you over on Summer Avenue in 15 minutes.’ He jumped in his car to meet me, I gave him the [WWF] phone number and the rest was history.”