In case you haven’t heard, the Macho Man, Randy Savage, died of a heart attack today. Specifically, he was driving down a road, suffered a major attack and slammed into a tree. He was 58. His real name was Randall Poffo.
Any boy who grew up in the 1980s knew—and revered—Savage. He was, to be blunt, a bad-ass motherfucker. There were different levels of WWF superstars back then, and Savage was right near the top, probably below only Hulk Hogan and, perhaps, Andre the Giant. He was really into flexing and ripping shirts, and his catch phrase—”Whatchya gonna do when the Macho Man gets a hold of you!”—still rings loudly in my head. Since the sport was, obviously, fake, I have no idea whether Savage was actually a good wrestler. Also, since 99 percent of these guys were loaded up on all sorts of crazy juices, who knows what his true personality was.
As a performer, however, isolated in his world, nobody was better.
Interestingly, the obituary I read noted that Savage was married for the second time—and that his first wife died of a drug overdose. Her name was Elizabeth, and in the WWF world she was the sultry Miss Elizabeth—Macho Man’s slinky manager.
Anyhow, the whole thing is sad—another low in the world of pro wrestling …
