TMZ is reporting that former WWF World Champion “Macho Man” Randy Savage is dead. Savage, real name Randall Mario Poffo, suffered a heart attack while he was behind the wheel of his car at around 10 AM this morning and lost control of his vehicle. TMZ got the news from Savage’s brother Lanny, and this is officially the first thing The Genius has ever said that made me sad.
The importance of Savage as a performer can’t be overstated. He was simply one of the greatest and most memorable pro wrestlers in the history of the industry. His career began in 1973 and took him through the two biggest boom periods in pro wrestling popularity, first in the “Rock n’ Wrestling” WWF of the 1980s and then as a part of World Championship Wrestling and the nWo in the 1990s. He was in cartoons, wrestled Peter Parker, held a heavyweight championship wherever he went and participated in the consensus choice for the greatest match of all time against Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat in front of every imaginable wrestling fan at Wrestlemania III.
You can’t just toss a guy like this into a recap paragraph. Savage is a pillar of nearly all of our wrestling memories, be it on Saturday mornings or Monday nights or in pillow form. Slim Jims, neon hats, raspy voices, marriage proposals … they are all indelibly marked by the Macho Man. Heaven saw somebody corpsing and sent for The Man.
Rest in peace, Macho.
