After acquiring World Championship Wrestling (WCW) in 2001, the World Wrestling Federation wasted no time in hiring numerous former WCW stars to bolster their roster, but one notable absence among these acquisitions was the legendary ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage. Despite bringing in several other WCW icons, the WWF never tried to negotiate a potential return with Savage, leaving fans to wonder what could have been if ‘The Macho Man’ had made a comeback to wrestling world’s biggest stage.
On a recent episode of his weekly ‘Grilling JR’ podcast, Jim Ross spoke about the situation and why they never ended up bringing Randy Savage back in 2001 or 2002.
Here’s what J.R. had to say about the Macho Man (with whom he did commentary in 1993 & 1994):
“I didn’t enjoy working with him. It wasn’t because of his lack of talent, he was just hard to get along with and second-guessed everything. But was he a star? Oh my god yes absolutely.
At one time Vince said Savage was as hot as anybody we had on the roster, including Hulk and that’s hard to say and it maybe an eye-rolling thing to viewers listening to the show. But Randy got hot as well and that was because of Vince’s booking and allowing Savage to contribute in a controlled way with his own Creative.
So, uh, but, Savage wasn’t a popular choice to come back into the locker room and come back into the team. For whatever reason there were, he was daunting to work with at times. And you know when you’re not hot, the last thing you want is have a talent come in that you perceive might be negative and might be problematic.
Randy’s situation was he’s a smart guy, he needed to be on top and apparently Vince was just not ready for Savage to be back on top. He never made it back. Hogan made it back, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall made it back. Lots of guys made it back, but not Randy Savage.”
The Macho Man ended up returning to main stream wrestling in 2004, when he briefly joined Dixie Carter’s Total Nonstop Action! (TNA).
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