Claims Department Randy Savage Image courtesy Cedric Bacon - http://batced.deviantart.com/ Macho Man Randy Savage. The name rings 1980s, doesn’t it? Macho was at it’s peak in the 1970s, the song Macho Man was a hit in 1978. The persona of Macho Man Randy Savage was as flamboyant as the song, with pastel purple tights, sequined robes and bedazzled sunglasses. When he spoke, his voice was gravely like a 99-year old smoker. HE was athletically build, though he bulked up towards the end of his career, Randy was lithe, some might even call him skinny, when he started, and by the end he was a behemoth. All the while, he was an athlete. He wasn’t the first flying heavyweight, that concept dated back to the 1950s, but he was one of the best, certainly for his era. When he was motivated, there was none better, but as time went by, he was less-and-less motivated. He had some classic matches: Lawler, Steamboat, Flair, Hogan, DDP and more. He was also a shockingly big figure with the world outside of wrestling. He was given the ball and while he never eclipsed Hogan, he was certainly a close second to him for much of his career as the biggest name in wrestling. Sadly, Randy Savage passed away after suffering a heart attack while driving in Florida. He made it to 58, an age much older than many of those who have already passed in his generation of wrestling superstar.He wasn’t too often on the list of those who ‘were next’, so it was a surprise. A Heart Attack, the kind of thing that plagues guys who lived hard, traveled 200+ days a year and often had to use a variety of drugs like somas and booze just to keep themselves able to wake up in the morning. Was Savage a steroid user? Who knows, but looking at his physique, it’s likely at least for part of his career. Randy Savage was an important part of my journey towards becoming a wrestling fan. While never my favorite, he was always one I knew would put on an impressive show. Over the years, he had moments that amazed, and infuriated a younger Chris Garcia. Much like the legendary Mitsu- haru Misawa, Randy Savage could be seen as the best example of what wrestling could be, but in a very different way. Randy Savage and Leapin’ Lanny Poffo vs. The Rock ‘n Roll Express – Memphis, June 25th, 1984 I hadn’t started reading the wrestling magazines that appeared monthly at my local Safeway in 1984. I wasn’t yet a fan of the level I would be just a year later. It was only by chance that I saw a snippet of a match on a late-night television programme that covered wrestling from the previ- ous few weeks. I want to see it was called Matwatch, but I so can’t remember. I would watch it once in a while, this was the peak of the 1980s wrestling boom when you, right around the time of the legendary Hogan vs. Piper match from MSG that was seen on MTV and the Cindi Lauper angle with Capt. Lou Albano and Wendi Richter. The show didn’t show any WWF stuff, just stuff from the smaller territories that were still around. The one that they showed most frequently was Memphis, where the King was Jerry Lawler. I had seen one or two of his matches, including at least one with Randy Savage. It was a different match that really drove home the point that Randy Savage was a bad, bad man. There was a feud going on between The Rock ‘n Roll Express, the hottest tag team in the NWA at the time, and the Poffo Brothers, who went by the names Randy Savage and Leapin’ Lanny. Savage had been feuding with Lawler, and at the time, he was seen as the hottest commodity in wrestling. Who wasn’t signed to one of the big federations. Even I, as a kid of ten, knew that Sav- age was blacklisted. He had worked for his father’s ICW promotion in and around Louisville. Savage was the star, there’s a site about Randy in ICW at http://www.freewebs.com/icwpoffouniverse/ randysworld.htm that shows some great material. Savage was a big deal, but since he had gone to work with ICW, a group that ran in opposition to the strongest alliance of promoters in the world at that time, the National Wres- tling Alliance, or the NWA. The NWA had ties with all but a few major promoters, so Savage couldn’t find work in almost any of the territories, save for Memphis, which had worked a bit with Poffo’ Ss ICW. That led to the feud with Lawler, and then later for a feud with the brothers vs. the Rock ‘n Roll Express, Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson. Now, I didn’t see the whole match, which when I finally did see it years later, I was amazed at how forward it was. It looked like 1990s ECW, a wild brawl around the ring- side area and work that was faster than almost anything you were seeing at that point. The ropes had a lot more slack than they did even two years later. The impressive thing was Sav- age with his moves off the top rope. Well, that was the sec- ond most impressive thing. The most impressive thing was the finish. Ricky Morton was the greatest Face in Peril ever. He’d be the one getting beat-on for how- ever many minutes, he’d be kept from making tags for long periods of time and then he’d finally tag the much less-talented Gibson who’d come in like a house-on-fire and that’d usually lead to the finish. Morton was so good at it, no one sold a beating like Ricky Morton, and few folks had his cha- risma for tag teaming. He was never much of anything as a singles wrestler, though. The match was on the outside, I believe it had ended in a no contest or a countout, and then the insane happened. Savage took Ricky onto one of the ringside tables. That wasn’t normal, but then he did the unthink- able. He gave him a piledriver. The Piledriver is the coolest-looking maneuver in the world circa-1980. You pick a guy up with his head between your knees and then you drop into a sitting position. It looks like his head is being driven into the mat, which it would be if the guy who is upside down doesn’t shrug his shoul- ders and push up with his arms. When it is botched, like when Owen Hart did it to Stone Cold Steve Austin in the late 1990s, it can seriously derail a career. So, when he put Ricky in position to Pile- drive him on the table, it was incredible. Savage protected him greatly. He kept his legs somewhat bent so that his head never came away near contacting the wood, but none of us had seen anything like that. In the olden days, typi- cally in cities with like Tupelo, Mississippi, you would set a table up against the ringposts and then the guy would be thrown into it. This was new. This looked chaotic and they said that this had led to Ricky Morton being seriously injured and out of action. I believe that he was just leaving the ter- ritory for a while to do a tour somewhere else, but it certainly made Savage in my mind. This was the match where Randy Savage lived up to his last name. This was unbelievable. I guess that was the first time I knew I was a fan of the wild Southern brawling, and when I started watching ECW in 1995, I knew what they were going for. This match, which is up at http:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncWqmcgWe6Y , is one of the all-time great Memphis wrestling mo- ments. Savage on Tuesday Night Titans Randy Savage debuted in 1985, and after a couple of appearances on the WWF’s syndicated shows, he showed up on Tuesday Night Titans, aka TNT, a talk show formatted wrestling show that featured some wrestling matches. Some of the worst skits in the his- tory of wrestling were on TNT, but I loved it. It was whacky and had some strange stuff (like George The Animal Steele becoming lu- cid and talking about a disk being put into his tongue) to the awesome. The most awesome was the night when it was all the managers fighting over who would get to manage The Macho Man Randy Savage. At the time, the WWF had the great- est collections of managers ever assembled. There was Bobby The Brain Heenan, probably the greatest manager who ever lived. His Heenan family was legendary with some great wrestlers, like Paul Orndorff, King Kong Bundy and Hercules) and Heenan was just amazing at doing his inter- views and bumping like a mad man for the faces who would give him a punch. He seriously messed up his back taking giant bumps for The Crippler and Dick the Buiser in the 1970s. Classy Freddie Blassie, the greatest man who ever walked the face of the Earth, who was managing the tag team Champions, The Iron Sheik & Nicolai Volvoff. Mr. Fuji was around with Don The Rock Muraco, and I believe Luscious Johnny V was also in the running.