Wrestling’s Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage dead at 58
BY DAN CAHILL Staff Writer May 20, 2011 12:58PM
Wrestling superstar Randy "Macho Man" Savage has died in Florida after crashing his car Friday morning.
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Updated: May 23, 2011 9:44AM
Wrestling superstar Randy “Macho Man” Savage died Friday morning in a car accident in Florida. Savage, who grew up in Downers Grove, was 58.
The Florida Highway Patrol says in a crash report that the former wrestler was driving a Jeep Wrangler when he lost control in Pinellas County near Tampa around 9:25 a.m. The Jeep veered over the raised concrete median divider, crossed over the eastbound lanes and collided head-on with a tree.
Police say he may have suffered a “medical event” before the accident, but the report did not elaborate, and it said officials would need to perform an autopsy to know for sure.
Savage’s wife, Barbara L. Poffo, 56, suffered minor injuries in the accident. The two were married about one year ago. Both were wearing their seatbelts, according to the police report.
Savage’s brother, Lanny Poffo, told TMZ his brother had a heart attack and lost control of his car.
Savage, known to millions of wrestling fans around the world as the “Macho Man,” was born Randy Mario Poffo. Savage graduated in 1971 from Downers Grove North High School, where he starred in baseball.
Savage briefly played minor-league baseball for the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox, but a shoulder injury sidetracked his baseball career. Instead, he followed in the footsteps of his father, Angelo Poffo, a popular pro wrestler in the 1950s and ‘60s.
Lanny also wrestled under the moniker, “Leaping Lanny” Poffo.
But it was Randy who took the wrestling world to new heights. Along with Hulk Hogan, “Macho Man” Savage helped catapult wrestling’s popularity in the 1980s and ‘90s, while earning millions inside and outside the ring.
With Savage as one of his top-drawing cards in the mid-1980s, Vince McMahon’s WWF became as popular a three-letter acronym as N-F-L. The two-time, WWF champ--with his trademark “ohhhh, yeahhhhhh”--was often the headline event for Wrestlemania.
Some of Savage’s greatest rivals were Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat and Hogan, who just got over a 10-year feud with the “Macho Man.”
“I’m completely devastated,” Hogan said via Twitter. “After over 10 years of not talking with Randy, we’ve finally started to talk and communicate. He had so much life in his eyes & in his spirit, I just pray that he’s happy and in a better place and we miss him.”
Savage had been retired from wrestling since 2004.
During much of his career, Savage was married to his manager, “Miss Elizabeth” Hulette. They divorced in 1992. Hulette died of a drug overdose in 2003 while she was in the home of fellow wrestler Lex Luger.
Contributing: Associated Press
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