Shane McMahon Really, REALLY Didn't Like 'Macho Man' Randy Savage
Inside Shane McMahon's bizarre feud with a wrestling poster.
Former WWE magazine writer/editor Brian Solomon was a recent guest on the 6:05 Superpodcast with Brian Last, using the appearance to unpack a bizarre story suggesting that Shane McMahon wasn't 'Macho Man' Randy Savage's biggest fan.
Solomon, who was with WWE from 2000 to 2007, explained how people within the promotion explained to him that Savage was a persona non grata. He had conducted an interview with Randy about his rap album, 'Be A Man', and ended up publishing it without consulting the company's higher-ups, though his cohorts wouldn't explain why Savage was blacklisted (h/t WrestlingNews.co):-
“Nobody ever said why. I have to be honest without getting into all that. I never knew any of that while I was working there. I found out years later at least whatever rumors there were. I can tell you it was definitely a name that you can’t bring up. Among the jobber crew of us working there, you can say whatever you want. Among certain people, you definitely didn’t want to bring that name up."
Solomon continued, unpacking the brutal, unrelenting beatdown that Shane McMahon unleashed upon a Savage poster while he was working under the former 'Best in the World':-
"We were such marks in that magazine. That division of the company was definitely composed of people who loved wrestling so we would do markish things. We would have wrestling posters on the wall. We had a Randy Savage one up. I remember at one time I was working for Shane McMahon. He was the head of our department for a little while. I remember he came out of his office. He saw the Randy Savage poster tacked to the wall. He walked over to it. He literally poked it as hard as he could with his fingers repeatedly until it fell off the wall, then he stepped on it, and walked back into his office.”
Savage was infamously blacklisted by WWE after departing for WCW in late 1994. He didn't truly return to the company's good graces until long after he had passed away in 2004, with WWE producing a documentary - Macho Man: The Randy Savage Story - in 2014, then inducting Savage into the Hall of Fame the following year.