10 Hushed Scandals That Rocked Wrestling

5. Savage/Steph

“ I will never do business with that man again”.

Those are the words attributed to Vince McMahon, when Randy Savage’s name was brought up to return to WWE, years after he left the company.

It was a strange statement. After all, everybody came back to do business again with Vince. Everyone he felt betrayed or hurt by returned: Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, Hulk Hogan, Ultimate Warrior time and time again...but not Randy Savage. There’s no doubt a Savage return at any point after 1994 would have been big business, but Vince simply wasn’t interested. In fact, he was quite antagonistic to any suggestion about it.

After the end of WCW, and before Savage’s passing, the extent of The Macho Man in WWE was basically one magazine interview, and a series of of his matches released on DVD, which did not feature any commentary or new footage of him.

It’s believed by many wrestling insiders and higher-ups in WWE that it was an improper relationship between Stephanie McMahon (when she was perhaps 17) and Savage, that sealed his fate on never returning for even a single night.

To this day, Steph has never denied it (it would be impossible for her not to have heard the rumour, and one simple Tweet would have gone a long way to dispelling the controversy), Randy’s own brother hasn’t ruled it out, and while the company did put him in their Hall of Fame, it received relatively underwhelming hype that seemed ill-fitting to his pop-culture legacy.

This is a longstanding rumour that simply will not end. Whatever it was between Savage and Vince had to have been bad, and quite personal.