IRRESISTIBLE TARGETS: RANDY SAVAGE: THE Main OBITUARY

My obit of the Butch Man, Randy Savage, is in today's Independent; you can relate to it here. The newspaper gave it much of space, but had I had more there are a few things I would have liked to write about in more detail, admittedly it would have been more data than most of the readers wanted or required to know. It was slow to write, and I found that simply relating the highlights of Savage's career makes the place near the insanity of the wrestling business and its charm to 12 year old boys of all ages.

So I didn't feel I could waste space explaining the details of George 'The Animal' Steele's retard character. Put it this way: writing about Jake 'The Snake' Roberts disrupting a marriage by putting a cobra (why wasn't it his boa constrictor, Damien) in the wedding cake is better done deadpan.

One was his baseball career: Savage tried to style himself into a Pete Rose figure, willing to do anything in place to advance, including learning to throw ambidextrously. His talent was limited, however, which finally became clear, and he devoted himself to wrestling. I might have departed further into Savage's influences, beyond Gorgeous George, like Freddie Blassie (who was likewise a vast influence on the young Cassius Clay) and into the way Angelo Poffo was capable to set up a whole promotion with the limited intention of pushing his sons, and avoiding having them spending days in the wrestling equivalent of the minor leagues.

The love-hate relationship between Wild and Vince McMahon, who transmitted the WWWF and off it into today's WWE, was another subject I didn't take the distance to explore-Savage got a quick and deserved push, but today remains outside the WWE's own hall of fame. In one sense McMahon always seemed to face with Hogan, who had been his meal ticket, but there is besides the persistent rumour that Wolf had a relationship of some form with the identical young Stephanie McMahon, but I felt that was speculation I didn't want to get into in the setting of an obit.

I would have liked to give some distance to 'Team Madness' as well, Savage's three-woman entourage which included his then-girl friend, a much younger stripper named Stephanie Bellars, whom he rechristened 'Gorgeous George'. The former two were Madusa Miceli, probably the most talented American woman wrestler of her generation, and Miss Madness, Nora Greenwald, who went on to become Molly Holly. Again I would have been speculating, but it seemed to make some kind of life-change when Savage stopped dating young strippers and settled into a kinship with his old baseball first love, who of trend was his own age.

The one bit that did get cut was more speculation, about the potential use of long-term use steroids and other drugs in precipitating Savage's heart attack; I noted the amazing number of wrestlers from that era who have died early, and particularly a number, like Brian Pillman or Savage, who were smaller guys pumped up to the form of dimensions and physiques McMahon desired and pushed. I also mentioned that Miss Elizabeth died in 2003, while life in a troubled relationship with Lex Luger, of an overdose of painkillers and alcohol.

But Savage's legacy will stay in the ring, where he was one of the big performers of the biggest boom wrestling is likely ever to enjoy. Unlike many of the superstars of that era, he went out and gave his all in the band most of time, and at his prime had some of the greatest matches, and surely one of the greatest acts, ever.