“Get Back,” the 10th song on the Macho Man Randy Savage’s debut rap album, calls out the punks fool enough to step too close.
“Get back, dude,” Macho says. “Or Imma have to bring the pain. Cause messin’ with Randy Savage, you’re insane in the brain.”
It’s easy, of course, to sit here in my pajamas and take shots at a twenty-year-old record. It’s a punk move to try to shave a sliver of a dead man’s stardom to promote my book (available *NOW* from McSweeney’s!). So, let’s take Macho’s advice for a spell and step back.
To be clear, I love the Macho Man. I wouldn’t write this much about him if I didn’t. Not only is he the greatest professional wrestler of all time, he’s one of American culture’s most fascinating public figures.
Before Randy entered professional wrestling, he played minor league baseball. Over 4 seasons, which included decent stints in single-A, he batted a respectable .254. When Randy injured his throwing shoulder in 1973, he learned how to throw left-handed and played 36 games in the field in 1974.1
It’s possible that this is one of those pro-wrestling origin story factoids that are truer in spirit than they are in fact, but I choose to believe it because you see evidence of this work ethic pop up throughout Savage’s career. The most famous example is his Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship match with Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat at WrestleMania III.2 The match was wholly scripted, top to bottom, a rarity in professional wrestling, where improv plays a bigger role than many would think. Steamboat recalls a list of over 100 maneuvers sketched onto a legal pad that the wrestlers would rehearse in hotel rooms weeks prior to showtime. They’d quiz each other, one calling out a random step and the other rattling off the following dozen moves in the sequence.
You take this, and you take the fact that the two had multiple televised appearances every week leading to WrestleMania III to build the match, and you take the fact that they had to perform this 14-minute waltz in front of 90,000 people, which was in 1987 the largest indoor gathering of people in history, and then you realize that not only did they pull it off, they put on what’s still today regarded as one of the greatest matches in pro wrestling.3 That’s saying something. And that’s one match of Macho’s 30-year wrestling career.
To name a few highpoints, there was the time Savage defeated four opponents in one night to win the World Heavyweight Championship, which he’d retain for over a year, being one of only nine men to do so. There was the time during WrestleMania V when he finally got the chance to wrestle Hulk Hogan on the biggest stage. Savage lost, of course, but not without showing the world that in so many ways he was the bigger, better man. And we must not forget the time Savage allowed himself to be bitten, for real, by Jake “the Snake” Roberts’s de-venomized cobra.
Accomplishments and feats aside, what makes Savage so memorable is the Macho Man character. His voice, his dress, his promos, as close to poetry as professional wrestling could ever hope to get. I’ll never forget the thrill of playing WCW vs. NWO Revenge on my Nintendo 64, selecting Macho has my character, waggling the control stick to taunt my opponent, and watching the 64-bit Macho circle the ring and shout, “Oh Yeah!” I’ve been Macho Man for Halloween. His spokesmanship got me to eat a tube of processed meats and mechanically separated chicken. I’ve watched a hundred YouTube videos. I’ve listened to every song on Be a Man dozens and dozens of times. He’s irresistible. He’s unforgettable.
I make two mentions of Savage in my novel, Kayfabe. One I’ve mentioned in a previous essay—Randy lifting Miss Elizabeth atop his shoulder after she came to his rescue against Sherri Martel during WrestleMania VII. The second is fictional. The character Sol is a retired professional wrestler who’s managed to carve out a solid final act for himself as a gym owner and fitness guru. In his office, amid memorabilia from his prime in the 1970s wrestling territories, is a promo poster. The bottom corner of the bill reads GRUDGE MATCH—KING SOLOMON VS. RANDY POFFO. In my head cannon, Sol saved the poster from their match, knowing this kid had quite the future ahead of him.
“Get Back” is an average track on Be a Man, which is to say it’s not very good. If Savage is watching on the other side, I hope he sees these essays as a heartfelt attempt to interrogate my adoration for him. He’s a flawed, deserving guy. I also hope he sees this effort as a little “insane in the brain.” Writing, be it a 15-essay series on Macho Man or a literary fiction novel about professional wrestling, requires a brand of dedication and repetition and madness that I think he’d appreciate.
Speaking of, tune in next week…
1.92 out of 5 punks
Baseball-Reference.com notes that it’s unclear whether Randy threw left-handed during his professional games in 1974.
The obligatory Wikipedia search of Ricky Steamboat upon mentioning him here has revealed to me that Ricky’s real last name is “Blood,” and he debuted in AWA under the name “Rick Blood.” Since Ricky was a babyface for most of his career, he had to change his ring name to something less menacing. The More You Know!
One of my nerdiest, most fiercely defended hills-to-die-on is my dispute of Wikipedia’s reported attendance of Wrestlemania III—78,000. The article cites Dave Meltzer, pro-wrestling’s most prominent reporter. Meltzer claims this figure was publicly announced by a WWE executive some years after the event, but it’s wrong. Look at any picture of the event, the published pro football capacity of the Pontiac Silverdome, the published capacity of similar Silverdome events, like concerts or the 1987 mass with Pope John Paul II, and even the efforts of fans to literally count the number of seats.
And frankly, I don’t care how many tickets were sold. I care how many people were under that roof, staff and vendors and all, when Hulk Hogan slammed Andre the Giant. WWE reported 93,173. That may be an exaggeration, but let’s not split hairs. The number is far closer to 90,000 than 78,000.