Kayfabe! – Breaking Kayfabe w/ Lanny Poffo

Kayfabe!
Breaking Kayfabe w/ Lanny Poffo

This is the third installment of this series, and it’s also the longest, clocking in at about an hour and a half. In addition to learning things about Lanny Poffo (including some things I could have done without, such as the fact that he doesn’t use T.P.) there’s also a lot of discussion about his late brother, and it’s the closest that the world will now come to a shoot with the Macho Man (and Lanny actually does a pretty good impression of him).

The big surprise, to me, is why Randy isn’t in the hall of fame. No, it’s got nothing to do with Vince hating him for allegedly banging an underage Stephanie. It’s because Savage was so upset when the whole Von Erich family got inducted, that he insisted that the only way he’ll go in would be with his father and brother as the Poffo family. Big Johnny even called Lanny before WrestleMania this year and asked about Savage being inducted and Lanny told him that only if the whole family goes in. One of Randy’s biggest regrets was that he didn’t fight harder to get his father a spot in a legends battle royal at a house show, so Lanny is insistent on keeping Randy’s word. Lanny also opens up about why Savage left in ’94. Savage hated his announcing gig, and felt he had one last great match in him, he wanted to do a two year program with Shawn Michaels and he felt that he and Shawn could have the same type of match that he had with Steamboat at WrestleMania III. But Vince told him there was a youth movement and Savage’s place was behind the microphone.

Lanny cuts loose a little bit and spews some venom. He’s upset that nobody from the WWE, except for the Fink, sent any condolences to him or his mother over the loss of his father. When Sean asks about the longstanding rumors about Savage locking Liz in closets, Lanny gets upset and sets the record straight. It wasn’t anything like that, it’s because Randy didn’t want Liz changing and dressing in the same locker room as all the boys (and who could blame him). Lanny especially gets upset at Fred Ottoman who was recently interviewed and talked about those rumors. He’s also not too fond of the late Bam Bam Bigelow, because Lanny put him over night after night, and Bigelow never thanked him for it, even though guys in the business a lot longer than him, like Terry Funk and Ron Bass, would thank him for putting them over.

As expected, the discussion of Savage turns to that fateful day in 2011 when the accident happened and Macho Man left us forever. Lanny gives a pretty detailed account of things, from when he found out to what all he’d been told. He goes on a side tangent of how heartless the media is, the day of the funeral and they’re as his mother’s house trying to interview her. Lanny showed up and told them to get their shit and get out his mother’s house.

There’s some light hearted discussion as well, specifically the longstanding rumor about Lanny being able to suck his own dick. It’s true, by the way. Sean: Flexible or large? Lanny: Both. Lanny points out that it’s only illegal to do that on a playground, and he never has. There’s also disucssion about the rumors of Lanny being gay, mostly because the Genius was so flamboyant. Lanny was married for over twenty years, so he’s not gay. But he tells a story about working with Hogan and Hogan doing the spot where he scratches Lanny’s back and telling him to sell it like Jim Barnett. At the end Lanny tries to rib Sean and asks him if he could suck his own dick (the punchline is supposed to be Sean saying no and Lanny saying, “so you’ve tried”). Sean doesn’t take the bait and says he’s never tried but he doesn’t think so.

In addition to Macho Man stories, Lanny has some good ones of his own of just how big a douchebag Jay Strongbow was as an agent. One of Lanny’s favorite people was King Curtis, who managed Kamala for a short spell. Strongbow told Curtis that he was just there as charity case, and Curtis up and left. Vince called and wanted him back, and told him he’d make Strongbow kiss his ass in front of all the boys, and he did. When Lanny started doing his poetry gimmick, he asked Strongbow (the agent that night) who he was working with, so he could prepare a better poem and Strongbow’s answer was “I hate your gimmick.” so Lanny just wrote poems about everyone on the roster, so when he got his match at the last minute, he had one ready to go. Lanny had a good comeback to Strongbow, which was that he didn’t have a gimmick, he was really writing poems, but Strongbow had the gimmick of being a fake Indian. Burn!

The 411: The Macho Man discussion is the definite highlight, but there's some good stuff about Lanny too. I'm always more interested in the wrestling side of things, and this delivers in spades in that department.
Final Score:  8.0   [ Very Good ]