Jim Ross Shares His Thoughts on Randy Savage

I was never close to Randy Savage but I had immense respect for his in ring work. Savage was a gifted high flier, had uncanny crowd psychology and a tough, athletic persona that could not be duplicated.

‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage was a legit star in the world of pro wrestling and one of the most famous wrestlers of any era.

Randy Savage is arguably one of the top 2-3 wrestlers that helped establish the WWE as the dominate promotion of its kind in the world. Savage deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Andre, Hulk, Piper, etc.

In my over four decades in the business, I have never encountered anyone who I perceived was as intense, 24X7, as ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage. He was a gifted athlete, he played minor league baseball a handful of years, and brought artful athleticism and raw reality to his profession.

Before I ever stepped foot in WWE, I thought, as one who was earning a living in the business elsewhere, that the Savage-Steamboat match from WM3 was the best WWE match that I had ever seen. A handful of other bouts since then have ranked right up there with it but after a quarter of a century the ‘Macho Man-Dragon’ encounter from the Pontiac Silverdome still holds up today as an all time wrestling classic.

One never had to guess where they stood with Savage and he never had any issues expressing himself. He was, seemingly, always on edge or, perhaps more specifically, on point. Randy carried himself as one not to be trifled with and as a man who had great passion for his profession and unmatched intensity.

Fans of the genre of pro wrestling lost one of the most famous and skilled performers of all time this morning in Tampa when the former WWE Champion apparently had a heart attack while driving his vehicle with his wife of one year who was the sole passenger.