2003 was an exciting, dangerous time for popular music. Elvis had been dead for a long time, but we were still another decade away from U2 forcing their crappy CD onto everyone’s Apple devices. Clearly something was needed to fill the gap in the cultural zeitgeist. And that something was …
… Randy “Macho Man” Savage.
Wrestlers making music is, sadly, a long-standing tradition. WWE in particular had been pumping out their entrance music compilations for years at that point (Yeah, I bought one once, wanna fight about it?) and had previously attained some small amount of success with stuff like “The Wrestling Album” and the imaginatively named “Piledriver: The Wrestling Album 2”.
(Never forget!)
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Meanwhile, WCW had gone out of business once and for all in 2001, and with its demise came Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage, for a while. Hogan being Hogan, bounced back with a massive comeback in WWE in 2002, even won the WWE title again.
Randy … not so much.
Although Savage was the recipient of a very large contract with WCW when he signed in 1994, his star was fading by 2000, when the company was on its last legs. Savage actually had the opportunity to return to the WWF in 1996 when his WCW contract expired, but Vince McMahon viewed him as over-the-hill and wouldn’t offer the same kind of main event push that someone like Hogan was being offered at the same time.
Really, it would have been simple economics anyway: both Hogan and Savage were negotiating at the same time, and any offer to Hogan would have eaten up the budget for the already-challenged WWF. I mean, Vince literally couldn’t afford to pay Bret Hart the 20 year contract he signed! They were practically living hand-to-mouth in Connecticut in 1996.
Regardless, Savage stayed with WCW and then his body started rapidly breaking down. Years of dropping the big elbow destroyed his knees, and he suddenly ballooned back up to pre-steroid size in 1999, reinventing himself as the sleazy leader of a harem of women who dressed like a pimp. It was only lacking an entrance in a convertible sports car to be seen as the walking midlife crisis that it was.
Savage got crazier and demanded more money, until finally even WCW didn’t want to pay him any longer given his history of hurting guys thanks to his own injuries and outrageous pay demands. He made one final appearance for the company in a nothing battle royal, and then left in 2000 and was never seen again in either WCW or WWE.
KEITH: Hall of Famers that were blacklisted by WWE
Years later, after becoming an eccentric recluse (remember, as "Speed" taught us, only poor people are “crazy”), he re-emerged. Apparently, he was really mad at Hogan and wanted to settle things with a fake wrestling match, which I’m sure would have taken place during Hogan’s post-WWE overseas tour.
Apparently Hogan said some stuff on the radio about Savage’s family or something, so they were going to have a worked wrestling match to settle it, wherein Savage would prove he was tougher. Or something?
However, no one could quite figure out what exactly his beef with Hogan was, the only way he could express it properly was with … GANGSTA RAP. Sadly missing out on the era of YouTube sensations by a few years, Randy actually convinced someone to finance an album called “Be a Man," where he dropped some phat beats on the Hulkster and any other sucker MCs who were foolish enough to mess with him. Musically or otherwise.
It was bizarre. Savage’s PR department sent me a copy for review, and luckily for them, it was before I became so jaded about that kind of thing and would still try to review stuff sent to me.
Nothing against Johnny Mundo, for example, but a DVD copy of “Boone the Bounty Hunter” showing up in my mailbox is just as likely to get used as a drink coaster. You’ve gotta protect the furniture, ya know?
Anyway, “Be A Man” was a real thing that happened. And here’s the evidence:
Maybe I should have just used that one as a coaster, too. Although apparently it’s worth about $60 on Amazon now if you want a copy, so that’s an expensive coaster.
In case you haven’t had the pleasure of listening to the dulcet tones of all 45 minutes of this insanity, Savage throws out a variety of grandstand challenges to wrestlers and rappers alike, declaring that he’s got the combined forces of wrestling fans and rap fans behind him.
(Although given the sales of the CD, I wouldn’t have been so quick to brag about the size of your audience.)
We also learned fascinating facts from the lyrics; for instance that “Macho” is actually an acronym and the “O” stands for “OOOOOOOH YEAH!”. You think Kanye West could come up with that kind of lyrical gold?
Regardless, Hogan actually took the high road for once and ignored Savage, mostly because there was no money to be made in acknowledging him. However, the album did have one pretty surprising side-effect: one of the numerous throwaway “diss tracks” on the CD involved Savage dropping some truth on one Paul “Triple H” Levesque, proclaiming that Levesque was a hater (as were everyone else in the industry, apparently) because he had been with some unnamed person in Levesque’s life in the biblical sense.
Now normally this kind of nonsense would have amounted to nothing, but this is the internet we’re talking about, and there were already whispers about Savage’s contentious relationship with Vince McMahon coming from an affair between Savage and an underaged Stephanie McMahon years before. To date there’s been no proof or substantiation from anyone involved, but this sure didn’t help matters.
Anyway, as you might expect, this musical masterwork did not lead to Savage making a name for himself as a rapper, and it did not lead to a showdown with Hogan where all the profits went to children’s hospitals. It disappeared quickly and quietly, fading out like the final slow jam on “Be A Man," which by the way is about the deep friendship between Savage and Mr. Perfect that no one had ever heard about until Perfect died in 2003.
Savage disappeared from both the wrestling and rapping business completely and became even more of a recluse, sadly passing away in 2011 from a heart attack.
Thankfully, I’ll always have the disc to use a drink coaster after I pour one out for the "Macho Man’s" rapping career.
