Bret Hart on the Macho Man Being Blackballed

[tmc1982]

This is a follow up concerning my curiosity in relation to Bret Hart's book (I previously discussed Bret's opinions on the Ultimate Warrior). Apparently, Bret also discusses Randy Savage's departure from the WWF. In a nutshell, Bret said that the Macho Man was already having bad blood with Vince McMahon, J.J. Dillon, and a lot of the agents, for treating him like crap. Savage and Bret afterwards, had a match in Japan, where the agents were suddenly trying to kiss his ass. In response to all of this, Savage told the agents to kiss his ass. Bret also that Savage was trying to hit Vince up with a bigger payoff (just like what Warrior tried to do back in 1991).

[Bob Schlapowitz]

What does the video have to do with what you posted?

[Throwback]

In Bret's Book all he says about it is. Randy called Vince while he was drunk one night and yelled at him. Bret himself says nobody knows what really happened except for Randy and Vince.

[toodarkmark]

Maybe he pulled a gun on McMahon like he did on Bill Dundee back in Memphis.

[Hugh Mungus]

I guess that this may put the "Savage shagged Stephanie" rumors to rest, after years and years of being beaten into the ground.

[livetowin]

Dec 25, 2008 10:59:45 GMT -5 Bob Schlapowitz said:

What does the video have to do with what you posted?

BECAUSE HISTORY BECKONS THE MACHO MAN OH YEAHHHHH!

[Mozenrath]

Dec 25, 2008 16:34:58 GMT -5 Hugh Mungus said:

I guess that this may put the "Savage shagged Stephanie" rumors to rest, after years and years of being beaten into the ground.

That, and the timelines, with Stephanie not being the young teen the rumors claim when he left.

Plus, the fact it's not a wrestling storyline, breaking the law actually makes you go to jail.

[don]

I remember reading that Macho Man took the Slim Jim deal and money with him to WCW when he jumped ship. At the time, Slim Jim was a HUGE advertiser for WWE. It would probably be fair to say that they sponsored over half of the WWE's event. And this was a gigantic source of revenue for Vince McMahon, as back in those days, I don't think that there were as many PPV events as there are today, making the revenue generated from advertisers even more crucial. This led to Vince McMahon scrambled to find advertisers to keep his company afloat.

This is the only kind of thing of thing that I can see leading to this much bad blood between them. I don't think that it was something that happened before he signed with WCW for the mere fact that McMahon came out on Raw one night, announced that Macho Man was gone, and wished him the best of luck, in what I thought was a very classy gesture. In those days, the mere mention of a wrestler who no longer worked for your company was unheard of. So, I think that the bad blood started after he signed w/ WCW, which would end any of those silly Stephanie and gun rumors.

[tmc1982]

Dec 25, 2008 10:59:45 GMT -5 Bob Schlapowitz said:

What does the video have to do with what you posted?

I was first tipped off on what was said in the book (like I said, I haven't had a chance to read the whole book) by the comments in that video.

[dizzy]

Dec 25, 2008 16:34:58 GMT -5 Hugh Mungus said:

I guess that this may put the "Savage shagged Stephanie" rumors to rest, after years and years of being beaten into the ground.

Jim Ross addressed this awhile back and said that this rumor was ridiculous. He also said that he put Randy Savage on his list of potential candidates for the Hall of Fame in 2007 and 2008, but Savage got excluded anyway.

[doinkmark]

Lanny Poffo (Savage's brother) also somewhat addressed the rumor in an interview, though his vague response sounds more like it would add credibility to the Savage/Stephanie rumors.

bi-wrestling.blogspot.com/2008/10/lanny-genius-poffo_30.html

I think these guys interviewed RD once also.

[HMARK Center]

I've been watching quite a few Savage matches and promos lately. All I can say is, I was already a big Macho fan way back when, but I've begun appreciating the guy's work on a whole new level now. The dude was just godly. Psychotic, but godly.

It used to irk me as a kid that Savage was runner-up in the '93 Rumble, since I REALLY wanted a Savage/Hart title match at WM 9.

[The Genesis of KoOS]

See I never believed the whole Savage boinking a jailbait Steph, but something BIG had to have gone down that caused this much animosity.

Vince has been known to forgive ANYONE when it comes to business. Hell he did business with the man who almost put him and his family out of business. If he would do business with Bischoff and not someone who drew him a lot of money over the years, something major must have happened.

[Joe Neglia]

The Stephanie thing got started on another message board years ago. Not even going to do free advertising for them, but it was tracked down to being nothing more than made-up crap by a dumbass with nothing better to do.

Think about it: Savage goes to WCW where he becomes one of their main attractions, especially during the time WCW started to overtake WWF in the ratings. If McMahon hated Savage that much about something that was ILLEGAL, he would have had it dealt with just for the fact that it would take Savage out of WCW's ratings.

Whatever happened, it seems to be on a more personal business level.

[Hugh Mungus]

Dec 26, 2008 0:19:53 GMT -5 Joe Neglia said:

The Stephanie thing got started on another message board years ago. Not even going to do free advertising for them, but it was tracked down to being nothing more than made-up crap by a dumbass with nothing better to do.

Think about it: Savage goes to WCW where he becomes one of their main attractions, especially during the time WCW started to overtake WWF in the ratings. If McMahon hated Savage that much about something that was ILLEGAL, he would have had it dealt with just for the fact that it would take Savage out of WCW's ratings.

Whatever happened, it seems to be on a more personal business level.

I've always thought that this rumor was attributed to Wikiality, as an RSPW troll named Dick Witham vandalized Steffo's Wikipedia page with said comment.

[nerdinitupagain]

Someone here had the best theory and it involved the Slim Jim sponsorship moving to WCW with Savage since it had been one of the WWF's biggest sponsors. In a time of slow business for Vince, losing that sponsorship hurt.

[tmc1982]

A very in-depth presumption concerning the Macho Man/Vince fall out in relation to Slim Jim's on imdb:

The Slim Jim situation has been brought up in other threads and has been laughed off this IMDB board, but it's the truth of why Randy and Vince don't speak to this day.

Remember that the WWE, in 1994, was not a public company. Vince was spending his own money and relying on ad revenue from advertisers to keep his TV shows on the air.

Also remember that this was around the same time as the steroid trial. Vince got off, but at a price. The bad PR surrounding the company, which was family-friendly back then, was devastating. WWE was all about good guys vs. bad guys, and it was a "safe" product that the whole family could enjoy.

Don't forget that 1994 in general was a bad year for wrestling. The WWE was suffering from low buy rates and poor attendance at house shows (Bret vs. Owen in half-empty arenas, the same arenas that were sold out for Hogan vs. Flair just 2 years prior). Wrestlers' morale was down and pay cuts were all over the place, which is why Bobby Hennan, Gene Okerlund, and Jimmy Hart had all left the company earlier that year.

Then the steroid trial happened and the newspapers were full of stories about steroid and coke-addled wrestlers who were coaxed into abusing these substances by McMahon, since their jobs depended on it.

True or not, it scared the hell out of the WWE's many advertisers, who started pulling out left and right. Remember all the commercials on WWE TV back then? All kid-friendly products (candy bars, toys, video games, breakfast cereal, those little Nerf footballs with the spikes at the end).

One of the few remaining advertisers was Slim Jim, who had a huge celebrity sponsorship deal with Randy. Here was a company that manufactured this piece of crap beef jerky whose sales went through the roof thanks to advertising their product on WWE TV (had any of you heard of Slim Jim before the early 90s?).

Late in '94, Randy and Vince were having contract disputes. Randy still felt he had some gas left in the tank, and still wanted to wrestle (apart from his position as Slim Jim spokesman, he was relegated to ringside commentator and conducted interviews with talent, and rarely wrestled).

Vince disagreed, mainly because the WWE's big marketing gimmick at the time was "New Generation", which was centered on then-young talent like Shawn Michaels, Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, with the focal point being then-WWE Champion Bret Hart.

But the "New Generation" gimmick was ludicrous. Not only was Bret only 4 1/2 years younger than Randy, but his primary feud at the time was with 1970s hold-over Bob Backlund, who originally left the company in 1984, 1 YEAR before Randy ever showed up!

Randy saw through this and wanted out. Around the same time, Randy's then-friend Hulk Hogan, who had just defected to WCW for a big-money contract just 8 months prior, came calling with promises of guaranteed money down South.

Randy came back to Vince expecting a counter-offer, knowing that Vince is most vulnerable and competitive when he's backed into a corner.

Much to Randy's surprise, Vince threw up his hands, wished Randy luck, and allowed him to leave the company he had loyally served for close to 10 years.

But the writing was on the wall.

Vince doesn't keep anybody he doesn't see value in, so obviously he didn't feel that a Randy Savage-less WWE would hurt. If anything, Vince figured, it would save him money that he desperately needed at the time anyway.

As for Slim Jim, Vince naturally assumed that Slim Jim would stay on as an advertiser for his TV programming, since the business relationship was so mutually beneficial. Through this, Vince could keep the ad revenue dollars flowing into the company, and Slim Jim could continue to enjoy their brisk sales as a result of the exposure Vince allowed them.

As for a celebrity spokesman, Vince also assumed that Slim Jim would ditch Randy as their celebrity client and snatch up any one of the other wrestlers in the company (Nash, Hall, etc.) to be the new "Snap into it!" pitchman for Slim Jim's then-ubiquitous commercials.

Wrong. Before Vince could blink, Randy had already met with the top Slim Jim execs and convinced them to not only pull their ads off of WWE programming, but to follow Randy down South to WCW. Down to Ted Turner's self-owned conglomerate; a billionaire who certainly didn't need the ad revenue.

So not only had Randy scored a major business coup against Vince, and not only did he end up costing Vince millions of dollars worth of ad revenue that McMahon desperately needed at the time, but he managed to keep his celebrity spokesman job while working for the dreaded competition (Vince's obsession with Ted Turner was full-blown at the time).

Vince felt betrayed by the fact that what was intended to be a cost-saving measure (putting an aging 1980s left-over out to pasture) ended up costing him millions of dollars. Worst of all, Vince deeply resented the fact that he was out-smarted by one of the boys, which has happened almost never in his 20+ years of running the company.

To top it all of, Randy just didn't care. He went to WCW, and while his 1997 matches didn't hold a candle to his 1987 ones, he made millions in guaranteed money working a relaxed schedule and surrounded by other WWE castaways (Hogan, Piper, Hall, Nash, Luger, Sean Waltman).

Randy was also at the forefront of the NWO Revolution, when WCW was beating WWE for 2 years straight in the ratings, and Vince came close many times to going out of business.

As far as Randy was concerned, it was business, and he's living off the fruits of his labor to this day. But Vince took it personally. And there's nothing Vince hates more than ex-WWE guys who don't need him.

Think about it. How many former WWE stars from the 80s and 90s ended up drug-addled, broke, and useless in the real world? How many have been sitting by the phone for the last 10 years waiting breathlessly for Vince to call and offer up $500 to come back and get humiliated on Raw?

How many have spent the last 10 years calling the office every week begging and pleading for a shot, ANY shot, "Just please, Vince! Put me back on TV!"

It's more common than you think. Vince LOVES playing God and playing Godfather to all the used-up talent he burned through from the time Reagan was President. He loves being their sole source of income (while they push carts at Walmart in the real world), which is why he's so quick to trademark their rings names and sue or issue cease-and-desist orders to keep them from making a living outside the WWE.

It's why he's so quick to sign them to non-compete deals should they ever get that one last "shot", be it on Raw or in the Hall of Fame, thereby preventing them from capitalizing on the momentum of being on national TV.

Vince's goal is to control everything about the lives of his current and former talent, even the ones he could care less about. Lord knows what strings come attached with the free rehab the company offers.

But NONE of this applies to Randy. Not one iota. Unlike 90% of his 80s-90s wrestling peers, Randy is happy, massively wealthy, and enjoying life. He doesn't need Vince or his money.

Vince, meanwhile, is still playing his little games 14 years later, showing what a spoiled little baby he is. Look no further than the Legends of WrestleMania game that's coming out for PS3 next year. Randy is NOT included in the game, and this is a guy who not only performed at 9 of them (II through X), but main-evented 2 of them (IV and V), and had the greatest Wrestlemania match of all time (at III).

But here we are, 14 years later. No Randy Savage action figures, no Hall of Fame induction, no retrospective DVD, and now no Legends of WrestleMania video game. Vince is seemingly still intent on getting his point across by blatantly ignoring Savage's vast WWE legacy, even though these projects could only be financially beneficial to McMahon's already deep pockets.

And yes, that is the saddest irony of all. After almost 20 years away from the WWE, Randy Savage is still costing Vince McMahon money.

[héad.casé]

Wouldn't surprise me if the above was true. Very interesting read.

Shows that if you piss Vince off enough and attempt to do something to damage his company he can hold a hell of a grudge.

[Mozenrath]

Dec 26, 2008 5:46:10 GMT -5 héad.casé said:

Wouldn't surprise me if the above was true. Very interesting read.

Shows that if you piss Vince off enough and attempt to do something to damage his company he can hold a hell of a grudge.

Makes sense.

WWE isn't just his job, it's his life's work, and Randy damn near killed it.

I feel the spiel at the end was unneccessary, it makes it seem like Vince WANTS people to have bad lives. It's not like Nash and Hogan were hurting for money when they came back, same with Steiner.

[mauled]

Just to play devils advocate just cause Steph was not underage does'nt mean they might not have dated in fact it seems more likely.