The Cult of Madness (If you can get through this, God bless you)

When I was six years old, I hated Randy Savage.

I didn't know what wrestling was until that year, and most of what I knew was from the covers of VHS boxes labeled Hulkamania at my local grocery store down in lovely Thurston, Ohio. I didn't know about the Wrestlemania IV championship tournament that Randy had won, or the Mega Powers tag team, or even how much he adored the lovely Miss Elizabeth. I knew that there was this guy, who had crazy eyes and a gravelly voice, who did not like my hero, Hulk Hogan. UNACCEPTABLE.



Looking back, at that age, I'm not sure if I would have been comfortable with Randy Savage even if he had been a babyface at the time. Hulk Hogan was/is a cartoon character, but he can speak like a human being when he wants to, and can choose to not have his eyes bugged out of his skull like he's on Stupid Human Tricks.

Add to that, after the Mega Powers exploded and the Hulkster vanquished the Macho Man at Wrestlemania V, he started wearing a crown and hooked up with the scariest rebound girl imaginable in Sensational Queen Sherri. A power couple to be sure, but one that I was very wary of.



We never had the option of cable living out in the country, so when my family moved to Columbus in the summer of 1990, my wrestling fandom was really able to flourish. No longer forced to wait for and rely on videotapes for my fix, I was now tuning into the USA Network each and every week to watch WWF Superstars of Wrestling. And every now and then, when I could sneak past my bedtime, Monday night's flagship, Primetime Wrestling. Most of my VHS rentals had been very Hogan-centric, so while I saw other wrestlers and characters, they were generally on the periphery. And if they were featured, it meant they were Hogan opponents who were quickly dispatched of. My exposure to Randy Savage had largely fallen into that latter category.

So here I was, seeing all of these new wrestlers I'd never seen before, realizing that I'd really been missing out. I still loved the Hulkster, but there was so much more. The Hart Foundation, The Rockers, The Texas Tornado, The Ultimate Warrior, Jake "the Snake" Roberts, pretty much anybody who was a good guy. I began to love them all, began buying their action figures, and Wrestling Buddies, and begging my parents to let me watch them on these mysterious "pay per view" events that Gene Okerlund was always telling me about.


I still have this figure. The good guys had to have somebody to vanquish, after all.


So I still hated Randy Savage. I may have been subconsciously entertained by him, because I do remember being much more interested in his feud with The Ultimate Warrior than I was with Hulk Hogan's feud against Iraqi sympathizer Sgt. Slaughter at Wrestlemania VII. I recall being desperate to learn the results of the show the next day at school (lol pre-web) and being blatantly LIED TO. I spent almost a week believing that somebody named Ric Flair had shown up and beat Hulk Hogan for the WWF title after he had wrested it from Slaughter. So while this person was a liar, they did in fact predict both Ric Flair's coming to the WWF later on in the year, and the Wrestlemania IX finish with Yokozuna in the Ric Flair role. Regardless, the career match between Warrior and Savage was what I cared about most, and this person had been honest about that one. I don't remember my initial reaction to hearing that Randy Savage was forced to retire, but it was probably, "GOOD. I HATE HIM." What I didn't hear about, and wouldn't see for a few weeks on TV (WWF notoriously gave almost nothing away after pay per views until they had drained the well on pay per view replay buys) was that after Savage lost, his Queen attacked him brutally with shoes and he was rescued by his former paramour, Miss Elizabeth.



This was, by far, the most exciting thing that had ever happened in wrestling as far as I was concerned. I immediately loved Randy Savage, and was heartbroken that he would NEVER WRESTLE AGAIN. He took his place as a talking head on the aforementioned Primetime Wrestling and was a tremendous foil for Bobby Heenan, but he never stopped seeming like a wrestler. So I suppose in retrospect, it was not at all surprising when he came back from retirement after his wedding reception was CRASHED by Jake Roberts and The Undertaker, the scariest man ever on earth. I don't want to do play by play on the man's career, but the point is, I was thrilled to finally see him in action as a good guy and someone I felt comfortable rooting for.

Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage left the WWF in 1993 and 1994 respectively, and so did I. I don't think it ever occurred to me to follow them to WCW and watch their exploits there. I wasn't comfortable with the idea of WCW. It seemed subversive somehow. Like any wrestling that happened outside of the WWF was illegitimate. So I just stopped watching wrestling after Wrestlemania X, and didn't really give it any thought until August of 1997, when my cousin Lee asked if he and his roommate, Franz, could watch Monday Night RAW at my house. This moment is pretty much responsible for my personality as it is today. Thanks, Lee!

Anyway, the Monday Night Wars thing between WWF and WCW was going on, so we would flip to WCW Monday Nitro on the commercial breaks of RAW. And lo and behold, all of these guys I remembered from a few years ago were now over THERE. Hulk Hogan, Mr. Perfect, Ric Flair, Razor Ramon, Roddy Piper, and yes, Randy "Macho Man" Savage. I don't know exactly what it was that happened at this point, but I was riveted by him. I was doing all of my wrestling watching with a couple of sarcastic malcontents in their early 20s, so the heel/face divide no longer existed. It was okay to cheer for bad guys and I LOVED Randy Savage. It was around this time that I began really seriously studying the history of wrestling and ordering videotapes. All Japan Pro Wrestling, Extreme Championship Wrestling, and yes, a lot of older World Wrestling Federation content. I was inundated with and intoxicated by pro wrestling, and the more I reached back to the past, the more I fell in love with Randy Savage.

I've not seen much of Savage pre-WWF, but apparently he was hell on wheels and I'm really going to work on seeing more of that period soon. But if you watch Randy Savage, especially from about 1985-1991, and you also watch the matches that surround his matches, you really start to see how special he was.This guy was literally years ahead of his time in terms of high flying and the pacing of his matches. He never stopped moving, and it stands out in such stark contrast from the rest of the largely lumbering WWF style of the era. Not to mention his promo work, which I was pretty much aware of just from seeing his stuff in 1997 and also remembering from when I was younger. It's still worth noting, because you cant watch a bunch of Randy Savage promos from 1986 and then a bunch of CM Punk promos from 2011 and not feel like you're getting a greatly inferior product today. Nothing against the guy, he's just in a bad environment for fostering creativity, and even if he wasn't, he's no Randy Savage.

I don't really know what I wanted this entry to be when I started it. It's feeling very fractured, and I think that's because I'm still processing Randy's death. He was absolutely my favorite wrestler in the world for a while there in 1997 and 1998, well past his prime but still captivating to watch. He's gone and it really sucks. I knew that he was a famous guy, and one of the bigger stars ever in wrestling, but until the news stories started trickling in, I didn't realize just how big a deal he was. The place I noticed it the most was actually from the Twitter feeds of UFC fighters, many mourning his passing. You had a few, like Tito Ortiz and Quinton Jackson, who are both essentially pro wrestling characters anyway, that you would expect to be saddened by his passing. But then BJ Penn of all people completely blew my mind when he wrote that Savage was his inspiration to become a fighter.

As of this writing, a story on his death, by Bill Simmons, is the front page featured article on ESPN.com. Four days after his death. He was a cultural icon, and I think that most of us had kind of forgotten about him until he was gone.

I think I'm going to pop in the Savage DVD set that WWE released a couple of years ago later tonight and enjoy the master at work.



I'll be back, probably tomorrow afternoon, with a recap of the Science Fiction Marathon. There are definitely some choice films in that mix that I want to write about.

Until then, keep living life on the edge of a lightning bolt! DIG IT!