RIP "Macho Man' Randy Savage

[Nobody]

OOOOO YEA!!!!!!!

so do we move this thread to the sports forum or the entertainment one hmmm....?

 

[Formaldehyde]

Actually, back in the 80s, wrestling was never known as "sports entertainment". That came later in the mid-90s just before the Attitude-era.

It has always been just as fake though, so the name has always been more appropriate than confusing it with the legitimate sport.

Tampa Bay has always been a hotbed. Matches were covered by local TV since at least the 60s. I used to watch it all the time when I was a kid. We used to practice body slams into the swimming pool when the parents weren't looking. I went to school with Tarzan Tyler's daughter, and we even staged a tag-team version of legitimate wrestling in gym class.


Link to video.

 

[Sadan01]

It has always been just as fake though, so the name has always been more appropriate than confusing it with the legitimate sport.

Absolutely, everyone knew it was fake. I'm not arguing that it's never been fake, but in the 80s, they (WWF at least) still stuck with a sense of "realism" insofar as they didn't acknowledge openly that it was fake. Count the amount of matches you see Ric Flair mouth "hit me" to the other wrestler, on camera? Almost every match you can catch a glimpse of him "running" the match.

Come the mid-90s, we were getting the "sports entertainment" line and "Please, don't try this at home" promo's, once again, from the WWF, so that really was the first time McMahon and the WWF openly acknowledged to their fans that "hey, this is just a soap-opera for adolescents and men (and some women too)"...

Do you remember some really old footage of someone (I suspect it was Psycho Sid/Sid Justice) hitting a reporter because the reporter asked if wrestling was fake? If you remember this footage, please tell me who that wrestler was. It's bugged me for years as I've never been able to remember who it was. The wrestler was slapping the reporter across the face quite hard and saying "was that fake?", and "did that hurt?" or something to similar effect.

We used to practice body slams into the swimming pool when the parents weren't looking.

That's what I used to do as well. Oh and realising that the figure-four leg-lock actually does hurt!

 

[ParkCungHee]

Actually, wrestling was one of the first sports to legitimately professionalize and standardize rules, it wasn't until the 1930s that "Entertainment" started to creep into Proffesional Wrestling.

 

[Formaldehyde]

Do you remember some really old footage of someone (I suspect it was Psycho Sid/Sid Justice) hitting a reporter because the reporter asked if wrestling was fake? If you remember this footage, please tell me who that wrestler was. It's bugged me for years as I've never been able to remember who it was. The wrestler was slapping the reporter across the face quite hard and saying "was that fake?", and "did that hurt?" or something to similar effect.

I have no doubt it was done at least once, if not dozens of times. Of course, this was the epitome:


Link to video.

But even all that was staged despite Kaufman being hurt from the pile drivers. They were actually friends.

EDIT: Here's more details from the local newspaper.

He played minor league baseball from 1971-75 for the White Sox, Reds and St. Louis Cardinals, where he was known as a quiet guy — so quiet, in fact, that his coaches barely noticed him.

So he switched to a far noisier sport.

"I traded my field of dreams for a ring of screams. Ooooh yeah!" Savage once told the Chicago Tribune.

When Savage gave up baseball, he chose to follow in the footsteps of his father, Angelo Poffo, an undercard favorite who won wrestling titles and was inducted into the sport's hall of fame. When Savage's father died last year, his famous son called him "a great example of a self-sacrificing, hard-working man who always put his family first."

By then he had found a way to make his mark. He draped his 6-foot-1 frame in exotic outfits and sunglasses that looked like they were manufactured by NASA. He wore cowboy hats that seemed to be made of Vegas casino neon. He developed a signature move — a flying elbow off the top rope — that was imitated by backyard wrestlers everywhere.

He even brought along an eye-catching manager — his wife — whom he called "Miss Elizabeth" as part of the act.

He wasn't that quiet guy on the bench anymore. And he had that unforgettable catchphrase: "Ohhhhh yeah!"

"He had that hoarse voice and that up-and-down sing-song method of delivery that was totally unique to him and made him stand out right away," recalled Mark Beiro, a boxing and wrestling ring announcer.

He parlayed his unique look and sound into a role as a corporate pitchman, ordering fans to "Snap into a Slim Jim!"

It was all just an act, said fellow wrestler Terry Funk, who grew up with Savage. Offstage he was "very private and very intelligent. Whenever you make the money he made in the wrestling business at the time he did, you are not a dummy."

Last spring, Savage wed Barbara Lynn Payne. Funk said she was Savage's high school sweetheart.

Although he retired from the ring, Savage never really left show business. He played a wrestler named Bonesaw McGraw in the 2002 movie Spiderman, did small roles in TV shows like Walker, Texas Ranger and Mad About You, and growled his way through vocal performances in King of the Hill and Family Guy. In 2003 he even put out a rap album called Be a Man with titles like Tear It Up and Macho Thang.

In recent years he made a name for himself in the Tampa Bay area with his charitable work on behalf of schools and children's groups. He became a fixture at the Steinbrenner Family Foundation's annual Christmas concert at Ruth Eckerd Hall, doing a reading of the famous Clement Moore poem that began, "Twas the night before Christmas. Ohhhh, yeah!"

Within hours of the wreck Friday, fans began flocking to the crash site to leave mementos.

"I'm so crushed," said Adrian Stepp, 29, a teary-eyed shipping store employee who grew up watching Savage on TV and in recent years often waited on him at the store.

"I don't think I ever saw the man in a bad mood — unless he was faking it on stage."

 

[dannyshenanigan]

Do you remember some really old footage of someone (I suspect it was Psycho Sid/Sid Justice) hitting a reporter because the reporter asked if wrestling was fake? If you remember this footage, please tell me who that wrestler was. It's bugged me for years as I've never been able to remember who it was. The wrestler was slapping the reporter across the face quite hard and saying "was that fake?", and "did that hurt?" or something to similar effect.

You have to be refering to when "Dr. D" David Schultz slapped John Stossel.

Link to video.

 

[Sadan01]

You have to be refering to when "Dr. D" David Schultz slapped John Stossel.

Link to video.

That's the one.
Thankyou for finally setting the record straight (in my head).

 

[emzie]

You have to be refering to when "Dr. D" David Schultz slapped John Stossel.

Link to video.

And then got sued.

 

[CoffeeShopFrank]

At 0:10, you can see actual footage from Heaven this morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXTagE7BtRU&feature=related

Credit goes to RySenkari for discovering this.

R.I.P. Savage Man!