Column by Angel Aramboles, adapted from his video on the WrestlingNews.co YouTube channel. The full video is at the bottom of this article.
For more than 20 years, a rumor has claimed that Randy Savage had a relationship with Stephanie McMahon in the mid-1990s and that it was the real reason Vince McMahon never brought him back to the company. The contract talks, legal threats and business dealings reported at the time tell a different story.
Here is the timeline from 1994 on, based largely on the Wrestling Observer Newsletter’s reporting from each year.
How Savage left the WWF in 1994
By late 1994, Savage was mostly working as a color commentator. He was 41 and wanted to keep wrestling as a top star while Vince McMahon pushed The New Generation.
Hulk Hogan was in WCW. Hogan and Savage had real-life heat for years, much of it tied to Miss Elizabeth and the couple’s 1992 divorce, which Savage blamed partly on Hogan. According to the Wrestling Observer of November 14, 1994, Hogan’s camp patched things up with Savage, and McMahon learned of serious negotiations between Savage and WCW’s Eric Bischoff. The Observer reported that about a week earlier, Savage had been asking for $600,000 a year and WCW didn’t want to go that high.
The WWF thought Savage was staying almost to the end. As recently as a week before he left, he was cutting promos as special referee for a Madison Square Garden show on November 26. The Observer of November 21, 1994, noted that the current WWF Magazine had Savage on the cover saying that even if another group offered him $40 million, he would never leave.
On the November 7, 1994, Raw, McMahon announced that the WWF and Savage had failed to come to terms on a new contract. According to the Observer, McMahon heavily praised Savage on the air and wished him well. That was rare at the time; most wrestlers who left simply disappeared from TV without an explanation.
When Savage showed up in WCW, the WWF served WCW with legal papers. The Observer of December 12, 1994, reported that the WWF claimed Savage appearing on WCW TV would breach an implied agreement with the company, since he wasn’t under a written contract. WCW’s lawyers decided the case was weak and put him on TV anyway.
The heat carried into 1996, when the WWF’s “Billionaire Ted” skits mocked WCW, with Hogan parodied as “The Huckster” and Savage as “The Nacho Man.” Lanny Poffo, Savage’s brother, later said the WWF never asked permission for the parody, objecting in particular to a joke about Elizabeth.
The WWF tried to bring him back in 1996
Two years after Savage supposedly did something unforgivable, the WWF was negotiating with him. The Observer of November 25, 1996, reported that there had been talks between Savage and the WWF, but the two sides were far apart on terms. The December 23, 1996, issue said Savage was unhappy with WCW’s offer, but it was still better than the WWF’s. On February 3, 1997, the Observer reported that Savage re-signed with WCW for a limited number of dates at $1 million a year.
From then on, the reporting was about money. In January 1998, the Observer dismissed rumors of a WWF return because Savage was under contract through the end of the year. In December 1999, WCW’s Vince Russo said he and Savage had agreed on an angle but were far apart on money, and the Observer reported that Savage’s asking price was well above what either company thought he was worth. His WCW contract expired on January 14, 2000.
In February 2000, McMahon went on The Jim Rome Show and complained about the way Hogan and Savage had left his company for WCW, according to the Observer of February 14, 2000. His complaint was about the business, not anything personal.
Savage’s last WCW appearance came on the May 3, 2000, Thunder, taped in Memphis, where he arrived by limo for a battle royal. He played Bonesaw McGraw in Spider-Man, released in 2002. In 2001, the Observer reported that a group that went on to form the XWF had talked with him, but his asking price was too high, and by December 2001, Dave Meltzer wrote that most felt Savage had “priced himself out of consideration and nobody appears interested.”
WWE kept doing business with him
In November 2001, the WWF’s Excess show on TNN aired Savage’s WrestleMania III match with Ricky Steamboat. In October 2003, Savage released his rap album Be a Man on Big3 Records, with a title track aimed at Hogan and a closing track in tribute to his late friend Curt Hennig. Big3 claimed it moved around 15,000 copies, according to Vice, while the Observer reported in November 2003 that it had sold 3,703. That same month, the Observer reported that TNA had seriously talked about bringing Savage in, though his heat with Hogan made it unlikely.
At the end of 2003, the first issue of WWE’s new SmackDown magazine included an interview with Savage about Miss Elizabeth, who had died earlier that year, according to the Observer of December 1, 2003.
Where the rumor came from
Around that time, Triple H was asked in a magazine interview about Hogan and Savage. “A reporter asked [WWE heavyweight champion] Triple H what he thought of Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage,” Lanny Poffo told Sports Illustrated in 2015. “Triple H responded with, ‘They were great, but they’re dinosaurs.'”
“Randy saw this as a deliberate attempt to hurt his brand,” Poffo said.
Savage responded in a “Members Only” interview, in which he said he would slap Triple H and take his girl, Stephanie McMahon, for a drive around the block. Triple H and Stephanie were together in real life at the time. Sports Illustrated reported that the interview led to the rumor, and Poffo told the magazine there was “no truth whatsoever” to it.
Poffo has also said he didn’t know either way. On the first episode of his podcast in 2018, he said, “I don’t know, and if I knew I wouldn’t tell you because Randy was very private,” and added that the only other person who knows for sure is Stephanie McMahon, as we reported at the time.
Others have said the opposite. Dutch Mantell said on his podcast in 2022 that the story was “commonly accepted backstage,” though he said he could not say it was true, as we reported. Savage’s ex-girlfriend, former WCW valet Stephanie Bellars, known as Gorgeous George, said in a 2020 interview with Hannibal TV that Savage told her about it. None of these claims has been confirmed, and Stephanie McMahon has never publicly addressed the rumor.
How it ended
Savage and WWE did business again before he died. He appeared in the 2011 video game WWE All Stars and filmed promotional videos for it. He died on May 20, 2011, at 58, after suffering a heart attack while driving in Seminole, Florida.
Hulk Hogan inducted Savage into the WWE Hall of Fame on March 28, 2015, with Poffo accepting. Poffo said Randy had refused to go in while he was alive unless it was the Poffos together: Randy, Lanny and their father, Angelo. In 2021, A&E aired a full Biography: WWE Legends episode on Savage’s life.
Analysis
When you lay the timeline out, the record points to business. Savage and the WWF split over a contract in 1994. There were legal threats and the Billionaire Ted skits. Then the WWF negotiated with him in 1996 and lost out on money. WCW and others later passed on his asking price, and by 2001 he had priced himself out. Through all of that, WWE aired his classic matches and put him in its new magazine. If the WWF had been willing to meet his price, we could have seen Randy Savage in the Attitude Era.
Some will say the rumor must be true because Stephanie McMahon has never addressed it. But if she did, it would be picked up everywhere, from wrestling media to mainstream outlets. She may have simply decided to let it go.
Was the fallout between Savage and McMahon strictly business, or was there more to it?
