Long but excellent article on the Macho Man, in three parts.
The Final Days of Randy 'Macho Man' Savage | Bleacher Report
The Final Days of Randy 'Macho Man' Savage | Bleacher Report
The Final Days of Randy "Macho Man" Savage
BY KEITH ELLIOT GREENBERG (CONTRIBUTOR) ON MAY 19, 2013 22,139
From the drivers seat of his 2009 Jeep Wrangler, just before the turn off Florida State Road 694 into the Seminole Mall, Randy Macho Man Savage stared through the windshield at the sun-washed commercial strip and sensed that something bad was about to occur.
I think Im going to pass out, he muttered to his wife, Lynn, in the characteristic rasp wrestling fans knew from his promos, building up matches with Hulk Hogan, Nature Boy Ric Flair and Ricky The Dragon Steamboat.
Earlier that morning, the two-time World Wrestling Federation (currently World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE) champion had mentioned that he wasnt feeling well. To his wife, this was nothing new. Randy seemed older than his 58 years; his body ached constantly, from decades of crashing into the mat while delivering his finisher, the flying elbow, from the top rope, among other physical stresses. Perhaps, Lynn suggested, he just needed to eat. So the two went to a Perkins Family Restaurant, where Randy ordered his usual, an egg white vegetable omelet. Still, Lynn wasnt convinced that he was better.
Why dont I drive? she offered.
Randy shook his head. After decades of piloting a colorful but controversial career, and a lifestyle that shielded him from suspicious sycophants and unwanted intrusions, he didnt give up the wheel. And so, they returned to their previous positions in the jeep. At around 9:25 a.m., they were just west of 113th Street North in the city of Seminole, on a four-lane road, passing the traffic light by Regions Bank, when Randy suddenly lost consciousness. With his foot clamped down on the accelerator, the jeep crossed the raised concrete median into eastbound traffic. Lynn frantically looked at Randy, then out the front window at the motorcycle and bus moving in their direction. Reaching over her husbands limbs with her long arms, the woman, who first met the Macho Man when he was a catcher with the Gulf Coast Leagues Sarasota Cardinals, swerved to avoid the other vehicles, deliberately slamming the jeep into a tree across from a Publix Super Market and animal hospital.
The impact was so slight that the airbags didnt activate. Lynn, 56, sustained minor injuries. Randy was pronounced dead at Largo Medical Center.
Since that day, two years ago on May 20, 2011, the real-life Randy Mario Poffo has been depicted as a recluse at the end of his life, a former celebrity who let his beard grow white, kept a registered gun in his glove compartment, and sequestered himself in a home surrounded by security fences and patrolled by guard dogs. But his family says that he was always accessible to them and spent his final months contemplating his legacypersonally, professionally and financiallyand making up for time lost to fame.
When Ang left the business, says Randys 86-year-old mother, Judy, of her husband, Angelo Poffo, a wrestler who once worked under a yellow mask with a dollar sign as The Miser, hed never developed any hobbies, except going to the gym twice a day and watching the stock market. There was all this energy and no place to put it. Randy was different. He worked on his house, he was busy with his animals, he married again, and he took us to our doctors appointmentsthings he missed all those years when he was wrestling.
Randy lived near his mothers development in Largo, Fla., down a bumpy, palm-shaded dirt road. Within the perimeter of the non-climbable fence, two dogs patrolled the acre-and-a-half surrounding his dark wooden home, built in a style more representative of the Old West than the modern Gulf Coast. On the brick pillars on each side of the front gate, cameras surveilled possible visitors. You needed an engraved invitation to get in there, notes Judy. Tired of people, I guess.
Randy used to own a condo on the beach, points out his brother, Lanny, another wrestler who worked, alternatively, as Leaping Lanny Poffo and The Genius. But he couldnt go out on the balcony without 1,000 people screaming, Macho Man. He needed quiet.
Ten days before his death, the family gathered on Randys property for Mothers Day. Before their arrival, Randy called his mother with an unusual request: the ashes of his dog, Hercules, a German shepherd from a litter owned by the late wrestler, Hercules Hernandez. Judy brought the ashes to Randys home in an urn. The Macho Man marched the family to a designated spot and asked his brother to pour the animals remains.
Why should I do it? Lanny protested. Its not my dog.
I want you to do it. If anything happens, I want you to do the same thing with my ashes, the same way, the same place. If its good enough for Hercules, its good enough for me.
In another family, a 58-year-old retired athlete might be beseeched not to speak in such morose terms. But Randy talked like this often. I didnt think too much of it because he always spoke fatalistically, says Lanny. He spoke fatalistically since our dad died.
The Miser
More than wrestling, more than baseball, more than the women he romanced on and off camera, Randy loved his father. While the wrestling icon inherited his mothers facial structure and penetrating blue eyes, he lived by the guideposts Angelo set, taking the older mans codes of honor and loyalty to sometimes militant lengths, accepting nothing less than perfection from physical challenges.
In 1945, while serving in the U.S. Navy, Angelo broke the world sit-up record. The story about him taxing himself to the point that his tailbone protruded from his skin is an exaggeration. But Angelo did develop some form of friction burn and bled on the mat. His clenched fingers were swollen and temporarily sealed together. Then, he played baseball that night.
Officially, Angelo completed 6,000 sit-ups in just over four hours. He followed up with another 33for every year he believed that Jesus lived.
That last detail became a complication in his marriage to Judy, a swimmer and diver whod received a scholarship to the American College of Physical Education in Chicago. In 1946, the school was absorbed by DePaul University, the largest Catholic university in the nation. Not long afterward, she met Angelo, home from the Navy, a catcher on the schools baseball team and competitive chess player.
When the couple wed in 1949, neither family was pleased. What have you done? Angelos mother pronounced after the ceremony in her native tongue. Although she didnt speak Italian, Judythe descendant of Jews from Lithuania and Belarusknew exactly what her mother-in-law meant.
Exhibiting the defiance that became the essence of Randy Macho Man Savage, Angelo stayed married to Judy for 61 years.
Randy would do anything for Angelo, sending his parents on trips to Japan and Europe and Israel until they told him they were too tired to travel. On Angelos 70th birthday, Randy paid $50,000 to buy his father a yellow, high-finned Cadillacthe same car the elder Poffo had purchased in 1959 and drove around the wrestling circuit for 200,000 miles. The former World Wrestling Federation champion restocked and refurbished the weight room at Admiral Farragut Academy, a St. Petersburg prep school, on the condition that the facility was named for his father. Later, when Angelo was sick, Randy installed an invalid toilet and walk-in bathtub in his parents home.
Angelo had a mantra he impressed on his sons: S.Y.M.Save Your Money. Randy was thrifty, too. Although never to his face, Randys detractors occasionally attributed the trait to his mothers ethnicity. Clarifies Judy, The whole familys like that.
Despite Angelos career choice, Randys initial goal wasnt wrestling, but baseball, a vocation his father encouraged, building a winterized batting cage and pitching machine next to the familys home in Downers Grove, Ill. Naturally a righty, Randy taught himself how to throw with his left hand in the event of an injury. As a high school senior, he hit .525 for the Downers Grove Trojans. When no team picked him up in the 1971 amateur draft, Angelo drove his son five hours to an open tryout at Busch Stadium in St. Louis. Randy went home with a minor league contract. In four seasons in the Cardinals, Reds and White Sox organizations, Randy hit .254 with 16 home runs, playing catcher, outfield and first base.
It was during this period that Randy met his future wife, Barbara Lynn Payne, while walking on Lido Beach in Sarasota. Starting in 1972, they dated for three years before veering in separate directions. She never knew him as the Macho Man, says Lanny. She never knew him as a wrestler. She only knew him as a failed baseball player.
His final attempt to play in the major leagues ended when the White Sox organization cut him in 1975, before the end of spring training. When Randy got released, he broke all his bats and got rid of all his equipment, Judy remembers. It was horrible. But The Sheik saved him.
The Sheik was Ed Farhat, a Lebanese-American U.S. Army vet whose wrestling gimmick included bloodying rivals with a hidden pencil, throwing fire and jabbering incomprehensible phrases fans took to be Arabic. He was also the promoter in Detroit, where Angelo and Lanny were wrestling at the time. It was Christmas, Judy says, and they brought Randy along. Randy wrestled The Sheik, and he got over real good.
It was The Sheik who taught Randy a concept hed later impart to younger wrestlers: Be the main event, even if youre on first. Randy admired The Sheik with the zealousness he usually reserved for Angelo.
He even cooked for The Sheik, Judy says. He made him cabbage soup.
Family Business
When Angelo was wrestling in Hawaii in 1967, his sons were exposed to King Curtis Iaukea and Pampero Firpo, performers Lanny calls the two best promos in the business. Iaukea began his interviews in a near whisper, slowly building intrigue and his decibel level until his voice was piercing the speakers. Firpo ended his interviews with a signature, Ooooh, yyyyeah.
Randy brazenly stole from both. The other touchesthe head tics, sucking in his bottom lip, twirling his fingers above his headwere all his.
Observing Randys feral ring style, Georgia promoter Ole Anderson changed the wrestlers surname to Savage. As his character developed, Randy phoned his mother and asked her to mail a compilation of nicknames. I saw the term Macho Man in a magazine and just put it on the list, she recounts. A few days later, Randy called me from Macon, Ga., and said, Whats a Macho Man? I said, I have no idea.
Not long afterward, Angelo opened his own promotion, International Championship Wrestling (ICW), based in Lexington, Ky. He used his sons as talent, along with a rotating cast that included Rugged Ronnie Garvin, Bob Orton Jr.father of current WWE star Randy OrtonOx Baker, Bob Roop and Crusher Broomfield, later known as the One Man Gang. While other promoters attempted peaceful coexistence with established territories, the Poffoseven Judy was involved with the group, as a bookkeeper, and Randys future wife, Elizabeth, would work under her maiden name, Liz Hulette, as an on-camera hostran an outlaw league that competed with the entrenched organizations. Angelo promoted his wrestlers as legitimate tough guys, as opposed to showmen, offering to bet $20,000 of his own cash at one pointagainst a donutthat Randy and his partner, Rip Rogers, could defeat a tag team from the rival Southeastern group in an actual fight.
It wasnt as funny as it seemed. Randy and other ICW performers began showing up at opposition shows, threatening to disrupt matches and frightening their adversaries to the point that some began arming themselves. During a confrontation outside a diner, Memphis Wrestlings Superstar Bill Dundee pulled a gun on the Macho Man. Savage grappled it away and pistol-whipped him.
I hated that stuff, Lanny says.
Manager Jimmy The Mouth of the South Hart was a staple in Memphis, but he would monitor the ICW shows on Channel 24. I couldnt tell anybody I was watching it, he says. Thats how tense it was. But Id never seen anybody wrestle like Randy, the way hed come down off the top rope. And he was colorful.
Eventually, Hart helped persuade current WWE announcer Jerry The King Lawler, the star and partial owner of Memphis Wrestling, to reconcile with his enemies, and a talent exchange was brokered. Feeding off the legitimate animosity, the Poffos began appearing on the Memphis promotions cards, with Savage in the main events. In wrestling circles, the Macho Man suddenly had national exposure.
Randy was destined to be the greatest wrestler no one ever heard of, if Jimmy Hart hadnt extended the olive branch, Lanny says.