Why Randy Savage's Brief TNA Run Was A Disaster

It was supposed to be a shot in the arm for a fledgling promotion and a grand return for an ageing all-time great. In the end, it not only provided neither, but was a disaster on almost every level.

Almost five years since he was last seen on a televised wrestling programme, 'Macho Man' Randy Savage made a brief comeback for Total Nonstop Action in late 2004. In the short time he was there, the Macho Man created headaches, caused controversy, and wrote an improbable end to what had been a truly remarkable career.

Just how he got there and what happened behind the scenes is a story as wild and unpredictable as the real-life Randy Poffo’s on-screen alter-ego.

To truly tell the story of how Randy Savage even ended up in TNA, we need to first chronicle exactly what happened between the end of Randy’s run in WCW and 2004.

The Macho Man had enjoyed a career resurgence while working for the Turner-owned organisation, having jumped there from WWE in late 1994 after Vince McMahon had deemed Savage ‘too old’ to regularly perform in the ring and relegated him to the commentator’s table. By 1998, however, Randy was falling apart physically and a torn ACL – which he suffered in the main event of Spring Stampede but worked on for another month – effectively ended his full-time in-ring career.

When he returned for a last hurrah almost a full year later, The Macho Man had jacked himself up, added his ‘Team Madness’ entourage, and would resort to more and more shortcuts and theatrics in matches in an attempt to disguise his athletic decline.

Savage was still a major attraction, as evidenced by the company putting their World Heavyweight Title on him for a whole day in 1999, but his performances were a far cry from what they had been before the knee injury.

His WCW deal ran out on January 14, 2000 - the same night he filled in for an injured Bret Hart in a house show main event against Sid Vicious. After that, Savage was only brought back once for a one-off appearance, showing up as a surprise in a World Heavyweight Title number one contender battle royal on the edition of Thunder taped on May 2. He got the hero’s entrance, chucked out a couple of lower-card guys and then exited the ring himself, before coming back later to raise the hand of match-winner Ric Flair.

That was pretty much all she wrote as far as Randy Savage’s mainstream professional wrestling career was concerned. WCW toyed with the prospect of bringing him back to do more, but were put off by his hefty price tag. In their eyes, Savage was no longer as valuable as he perceived himself to be. Aware that wrestling is a young man’s game and that he only had so many matches left in him, Randy was keen to get the absolute maximum for his services.

Between leaving WCW and showing up in the IMPACT Zone four-and-a-half years later, he was often in the headlines and flirted with the idea of getting back into the squared circle. Post-WCW, Randy dabbled in film and television, making a guest appearance on the show Nikki and famously portraying Bonesaw McGraw in the first Spider-Man movie, but wrestling talk was always in the background.

In the Summer of 2001, Savage discussed the possibility of starting his own promotion to help fill the void left by the death of WCW (and to a lesser extent ECW), with a focus on primarily touring the UK and Germany, an idea that never got off the ground.

After suing ex-girlfriend and valet Stephanie Bellars – who had gone back to working as an exotic dancer - for advertising herself as ‘the former Gorgeous George’, a moniker that Savage owned the rights to, Randy began negotiating with the XWF that October. Those negotiations didn’t go far, as Savage’s monetary demands were deemed to be ‘way out of control’.

Jacques Rougeau was also trying to coax Savage out of exile around this time for a show at Canada’s Molson Centre in June of 2002. The one-time Mountie planned on booking The Macho Man to team with Pierre Carl Ouellet (PCO) against Kurrgan and Sid Vicious.

In December of 2001, Savage was in the news challenging old friend/rival Hulk Hogan to a charity boxing match to benefit a children’s hospital in St. Petersburg, Florida. He and the Hulkster had a complicated, habitually dysfunctional relationship, and Randy evidently never forgave his old foe for allegedly helping (along with his then-wife Linda) to harbour Savage’s ex-wife Elizabeth Hulette (AKA Miss Elizabeth) when she left him many years ago.

Blindsided by the challenge, Hogan naturally turned it down, though he did say he believed Savage had good intentions with what some had branded a ‘publicity stunt’. Randy then went on local radio and argued that the fight could raise millions of dollars if it was put on pay-per-view, noting that both HBO and Showtime had expressed an interest in carrying it, which were dubious claims at best.

Savage ended up donating $10,000 of his own money to the children’s hospital anyway, calling it the ‘Hulk Hogan Coward Fund’ and saying that his enemy could use it as a tax write-off. World Wrestling All-Stars promoter Andrew McManus also made a donation.

WWA had only just run their first tour of Australia, capped off with The Inception pay-per-view, in October. Using primarily ex-WWE, WCW and ECW talent, WWA nonetheless did not have a bona fide headline superstar within their ranks. McManus tried to remedy that by recruiting Randy Savage and announcing him for WWA’s follow-up pay-per-view, The Revolution, which was due to take place at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on February 24, 2002, and was subsequently moved to the smaller Aladdin Casino Center.

It didn’t take long for the relationship between the two parties to go sour. Savage quickly replaced Jeremy Borash as head booker and brought in his running buddy Brian ‘Crush’ Adams as his assistant. Though when the ideas didn’t exactly flow freely, Borash regained his position with Randy still having creative input.

The scheduled main event of The Revolution was to see Jarrett defend his WWA Title against Savage. But Savage didn’t end up making it to Vegas. Instead, he held up McManus for more money than they had originally agreed upon.

According to reports, Savage had initially asked for $50,000 guaranteed and a 30% ownership stake in the company. In the days before the show, however, he came back with the astronomical fee of $250,000. That was rejected, so Randy came back with $150,000, which was also turned down. Bear in mind some of the undercard talents were paid $300 for working The Revolution.

McManus announced Randy’s no-show to the crowd but, in an effort to keep the lines of communication open and do future business together, he took the heat off Savage and said that him not being there was ‘through no fault of his own’.

This whole episode is important because Randy’s would-be opponent would start NWA: TNA just a few months later. As May rolled around there were already rumours that Savage would be involved with the upstart promotion. He wasn’t involved in those very early days, of course, with his only wrestling activity in 2002 coming as the co-host (alongside Mike Graham) of the Florida Wrestling Classics show on Tampa Florida’s WB Station.

Savage then kept quiet for the better part of a year, aside from publicly expressing his condolences after the tragic passing of Miss Elizabeth in May of 2003.

When he resurfaced in the public eye, the 51-year-old did so in, perhaps, the weirdest way possible; by launching a rap career.

While promoting the release of ‘Be A Man’, Randy continued to work his own angle with Hulk Hogan, who he called out on the album’s title track. In an interview with MTV, Savage said: “The fans are demanding it, especially when you get to the hip-hop culture. We got him boxed in right now and I think the fans want to see Hogan and Savage fight it out one more time.”

Despite getting some column inches for his grandstand challenge, Randy’s promotional tour was, on the whole, a living nightmare. Not long after the MTV interview, the Macho Man stormed out of an interview with Cleveland-based Extreme Radio 92.3. He was doing his usual routine and running down Hogan (including Hulk’s 1-800 commercials), when the host started taking shots at Savage for being a Slim Jim shill. When the host made the remark that Hulk Hogan was in fact a much bigger star than Randy Savage, Randy walked off. After he left, the hosts continued to rip on him, including making many unflattering comments about his age and appearance.

Things went from bad to ‘Oh God, how can this possibly get any worse?’ when Savage had a rotten night in Treasure Island, Florida on September 17, 2003. What was supposed to be his triumphant live concert debut at Mr. B’s nightclub/café turned into an absolute shambles, thanks to Hogan’s pal – local radio DJ Todd ‘Bubba the Love Sponge’ Clem – who took it upon himself to sabotage the show.

Bubba had been using the airwaves to simultaneously defend Hogan while denigrating the character of The Macho Man for a while, and encouraged his listeners to ruin the concert, with the promise of getting a free ‘Hogan Rules / Macho Man Sucks’ t-shirt. The small venue attempted to prevent the hecklers from getting in, but they managed to get in anyway, and proceeded to boo Savage and Brian Adams while chanting for Hogan. To make things that much more unbearably awkward, the CD that Savage was lip-syncing to skipped three songs in. In a rage, Randy threw down his microphone and walked off the stage.

His rap career might have been over before it started, since ‘Be A Man’ only shifted a few thousand copies and wasn’t exactly well-received by the critics either, but his war of words with Hogan and talk of a potential return to the ring persisted.

This included a tetchy argument with Jimmy Hart on the Mancow’s Morning Madhouse radio show amid rumours that TNA were attempting to bring Savage in for a November 30, 2003 pay-per-view. Rumours that Hogan - who teased TNA for an age before inevitably going back to WWE – would also be there suggested that the odds of Savage showing up were slim, however.

Neither Savage nor Hogan showed up and the pay-per-view was cancelled altogether, but Randy was hankering for a match with The Hulkster at another one; WrestleMania 20.

In the February 2004 edition of Razor magazine, Savage was asked about wrestling on the Grandest Stage one more time, to which he enthusiastically responded: “WrestleMania is where it’s at. If Vince McMahon invited me to participate in WrestleMania 20, I’d do a crazy flip flop into the air and say `Yeah!'".

Curiously, The Rock also suggested Savage as a potential opponent for him at the Showcase of the Immortals (on a list that also included Hogan and Goldberg), but Vince McMahon had no interest in even discussing the idea. Savage was still persona non grata.

Also in February, the old ‘Savage to TNA’ rumours started circulating again, with word going around that the Macho Man could finally have a date with Jeff Jarrett on their April 4 pay-per-view, which was tentatively titled ‘Bound for Glory’.

TNA had been using a version of Savage’s song ‘R U Ready?’ as their show-opening music in January and February, perhaps as a way of extending an olive branch to the legend. Savage’s people were quick to note that no deal had been struck, even if inDemand had him as being one of the stars of the show in its listing for Bound for Glory, and the show, once again, didn't take place.

There was more talk of Savage coming in in May, as TNA were keen to load up on star power for their new TV deal with Fox Sports. Coincidentally, Randy’s old squeeze Stephanie Bellars showed up as ‘Minsa’ for two appearances in early June, for what was a totally pointless blink-and-you’ll-miss-it run.

At Victory Road 2004, TNA’s first monthly pay-per-view since switching from an ambitious weekly model, it finally happened. ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, after so many years of scuttlebutt and false starts, made his TNA debut.

Walking down the ramp after Jeff Jarrett, Scott Hall and the debuting Kevin Nash had cost Jeff Hardy his chance to win the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title and then laid out AJ Styles and 3 Live Kru in the show’s main event, Savage looked barely recognisable covered up with a black hat, sunglasses and long leather trench coat. Presented as the big babyface coming in to even the odds, Randy didn’t do much but act aghast at what he was seeing, but his mere presence caused a considerable buzz.

It was, admittedly, an interesting hook to end the pay-per-view on and it wanted to be, really, since Randy was reportedly paid $25,000 for it.

What was meant to be the start of a programme between Jarrett and Savage went up in flames two days later when Randy quit the company over issues with Hulk Hogan.

While Hogan wasn’t signed with TNA by any means, Terry Bollea was backstage at Victory Road at the invitation of Panda Energy CEO and TNA co-owner Bob Carter. Savage had not been aware that the Hulkster (or his perennial hanger-on Ed Leslie) would be there on the day and when he found out about it, he was far from happy.

Sources claimed that Hogan actually told Savage that he ‘had his back’ when they came face-to-face, to which the Macho Man offered a sarcastic reply. Hulk then offered Randy the opportunity to go outside and settle their differences physically - something Savage had supposedly been trying to set up for years - but when Terry laid down the challenge, Randy backed down.

Feeling double-crossed and citing an unsafe working environment, Savage informed TNA higher-ups that he would not be attending the post-Victory Road tapings of IMPACT.

Brian Adams stuck up for his friend during an appearance on the Cowhead radio show in Tampa, saying that Randy had been snuck into the building and kept secret the whole day, while Hogan entered the Universal Studios soundstage in full view of fans as a way to get people talking.

Adams argued it was unprofessional and that the Jarretts – Jeff as well as his father and TNA co-founder Jerry – knew it was unprofessional. It was also reported that Savage demanded that Jimmy Hart stay away from him the entire time he was there, the bad blood clearly still brewing from their on-air radio argument a year before.

Other reports claimed that Savage was friendly with everyone else backstage, even if there was concern because he didn’t remember some people he had worked with closely in the past. He also told people that he’d get along with Hogan for the sake of business (should he be officially brought in) and would even do an in-ring feud with him if asked.

On-screen, TNA stalled for time by having Jarrett claim that he had left Savage in a pool of his own blood after Victory Road went off the air, with the TV shows having to be rewritten to account for the Macho Man’s no-show.

After reopening a dialogue with TNA management, Randy did agree to return to the promotion for eight dates, but he had a list of, quite frankly, outrageous demands in order for him to do so. These included limo transportation from his home in Tampa to Universal Studios, Orlando, two security guards (Adams and Ron Harris) at $1,000 per night, his own private dressing room, and that Jimmy Hart (who worked backstage) could not only not be near him, but couldn’t be in or around the ‘Gorilla position’ or in the production truck when Savage was on television.

Randy did work the next set of tapings, did interviews and was involved in a brawl to set up a six-man tag match at the Turning Point pay-per-view on December 5. A show famous for Elix Skipper’s death-defying cage-walk hurricanrana in the main event and for being the scene of Randy Savage’s last professional wrestling match.

Not that Savage was in it for the bulk of its duration, mind. Instead, it was said that he had been ‘kidnapped’ by the so-called Kings of Wrestling (Nash, Hall and Jarrett cutting loose in Elvis jumpsuits), leaving Hardy and Styles to do most of the heavy lifting.

Savage did emerge for the finish and it was quite the sight to see. Still concealing his deflated physique with long black everything, Savage limped out for the ‘hot’ tag, threw some weak punches, slapped on a sleeper and then pinned Double J with a punch to the face after countering a sunset flip.

Savage was clearly wary of doing anything physical and the end of the match had obviously been designed to prevent him from needing to perform anything halfway athletic.

The finish, in theory, was done to set up the Savage vs. Jarrett NWA Worlds Heavyweight Title main event for the group’s next pay-per-view, Final Resolution. That match never happened, as Randy walked out of the company again at the next set of IMPACT tapings on December 7, about 20 minutes before they were set to start.

The sticking point was Savage’s refusal to put Jarrett over in the match. To be fair to Randy, he had told the TNA booking team this when he was first negotiating to come in and his mind hadn’t changed in the interim.

The promotion – including then-head booker Dusty Rhodes – were frustrated with Savage when he again reiterated that he wouldn’t be doing the job at the upcoming pay-per-view, but the truth is Randy had been acting so erratically during his month-long affair with TNA and was so limited physically that the match being called off was probably best for all concerned.

Some accounts (like one from TNA’s Booking Director Bill Behrens) alleged that Savage would spend all day drinking, was in no condition to perform at the expected level and had to even be helped to the top of the entrance ramp. Some within the company defended Savage and put the blame for the whole situation on TNA for not tying him to any sort of actual contract and just assuming he would be happy to do the favours for the champ.

Jarrett would later say that Randy didn’t come to TNA for the money, since he was loaded and they could hardly afford to pay him handsomely anyway, but to help out the company and give back to the business. The fact that he was so insistent on beating Jarrett for the title implies it might have also been about the glory and ending his career ‘on top’.

Reflecting on Randy’s time in TNA, Dusty Rhodes would later say that he could ‘see it in his eyes’ and that Savage’s last words to him were “I can’t do this. I don’t want people to see me looking like this.” He just wanted to be ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage, and he couldn’t be that anymore. The American Dream told him it was fine and that he should just go home, neglecting to even bother with a half-hearted speech about showing up when advertised and putting over the current crop on the way out.

It has been speculated that there could have also been some underlying distrust between the parties, as the Poffo family and Jerry Jarrett fought in a bitter promotional war during the late 1970s and early 80s when Randy’s father Angelo ran the ‘outlaw’ ICW promotion and directly competed with Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler’s Continental Wrestling Association. They eventually did business together, yes, but it was said that the Poffos may not have completely trusted the Jarretts.

Whatever the case may be, that was the end of Randy Savage not just in TNA, but in mainstream professional wrestling altogether.

His next wrestling-related appearances were to sign autographs and help raise money for charity at some shows promoted by Harley Race in February of 2005. Savage told local reporters that he couldn’t wrestle on the shows due to ‘health concerns’ and boy was he not kidding.

During the February 3 show in Warsaw, Missouri, Savage and Race (61 and with a laundry list of health issues of his own) decided to get in the ring and ‘goof off’. When they were finished, Randy was in so much pain that he flew himself home, missing the next night’s show in Bowling Green, Missouri, and checked himself into hospital.

Macho Man Randy Savage is undisputedly one of the very best of all time, but his ill-fated TNA run remains a bizarre footnote and the strangest end to the Hall of Famer’s epic career. If nothing else, at least he realised when it was time to call it a day and preserve the memory of the exceptional performer he had been in his pomp.