Lanny Poffo Gives His Thoughts on Randy Savage/Viceland Documentary

Viceland has recently been taking the wrestling world by storm with their Dark Side of the Ring documentaries.

Perhaps the most intriguing was the documentary chronicling the relationship of Macho Man Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth.

A key component in the documentary was Randy’s brother, Lanny aka The Genius.

After receiving many requests for his feedback on the overall documentary, Lanny took to his blog via Pro Wrestling Stories, to discuss several major points of the documentary. Below are some highlights.

Lanny on Pat Patterson being a contributing factor to Randy Savage leaving WWE:

“The ironic thing was that Pat Patterson is one of the main reasons Randy left WWE. He couldn’t stand him for another minute. It’s not that he didn’t respect his work or his brain, he just felt Pat was an enemy each day of the years he spent there. Randy never forgave Pat Patterson for not including our father in WWF’s 1987 Legends Battle Royal at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford, New Jersey despite my brother asking a few times that he be included. Obviously, Tony Garea and Nick Bockwinkel were still too young to be amongst that ancient group! So rather than beating Pat Patterson up, Randy went to the WCW and took Slim Jim with him to the tune of $750,000.”

Lanny on Linda Hogan’s Involvement in the documentary:

“When I saw that Linda Hogan was in the documentary, I thought Uh oh! What’s she going to say? But she ended up telling the truth and she gave a very credible side of the story. I thought she did very well. I was afraid of what might come out of her mouth because when she wrote her book, she accused Hulk Hogan and Beefcake of being homosexual lovers. In my eight years of working with the both of them, that’s absolutely 100% not true. It’s one thing to out somebody but another to out somebody falsely just to sell books. Because she had done that, I was afraid of what she might say about Randy but I was relieved that she gave a very fair account of the situation in Miami before and after. She had done a good job and represented it very correctly.”

Lanny on Eric Bischoff’s involvement in the documentary:

“I was very happy with Eric Bischoff because he was the one who validated what I said. When Randy left the then-WWF for WCW, he brought with him Slim Jim. What I didn’t know was that it was a $750,000 contract. I never knew this amount. While Randy always confided in me, he never mentioned specific dollar amounts about anything. That was one of his quirks.”

Lanny says that WrestleMania III ruined Randy’s life:

“When you have a perfectionist, it’s a psychological problem because nobody is perfect. In order to have a match as good as the one with Steamboat, you would need an opponent as good as Steamboat and there just was not any. Half the reason that match was so great was that Steamboat was so great. But when they relegated Randy to the announcer’s booth, he witnessed the emergence of Shawn Michaels leaving the tag team division and becoming a great star on his own. He would say, “That’s the guy I can finish my career with!” He wanted the last part of his career to have a match greater than the one with Steamboat and then go out on top.”