Ask 411 Wrestling: Why Did Randy Savage Enter to the Graduation Song?

Welcome guys, gals, and gender non-binary pals, to Ask 411 . . . the last surviving weekly column on 411 Wrestling.

I am your party host, Ryan Byers, and I am here to answer some of your burning inquiries about professional wrestling. If you have one of those queries searing a hole in your brain, feel free to send it along to me at [email protected]. Don’t be shy about shooting those over – the more, the merrier.

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Bryan is tossing his cap into the air:

With graduation coming up, now seems like an appropriate time to ask: Why did the Macho Man use the graduation theme song as his entrance music? I don’t quite get the connection. It sounds great, but it makes people think of diplomas not flying elbow drops. When I graduated high school and college I imagined myself as Randy Savage as I walked across the stage, but why use it as your entrance music?

Let’s start with some background on the song itself.

In the early 1900s, English composer Edward Elgar wrote a series of five marches called the “Pomp and Circumstance Marches.” What we currently think of as the graduation song in the U.S. and Canada is actually just one portion of Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1, which rose to prominence when it was used in the coronation of King Edward VII in 1902. It first became associated with graduations when it was used at the 1905 Yale University commencement as a nod to Elgar, who was in attendance and awarded an honorary doctorate at the ceremony.

And that’s it for this week’s edition of Ask 411 Music History.

How did it get to Randy Savage?

The answer is that Savage was a huge fan of the wrestler Gorgeous George, and George used it during some of his entrances. During George’s time, it would have underscored his gimmick of being higher class than the peasants who came to watch him wrestle.

Savage was such a Gorgeous George fan, in fact, that in the 1990s while in WCW he bought the rights to the name from independent wrestler Robert Kellum, who was working as Gorgeous George III. (Part of the deal saw Kellum land a WCW contract, where he was repackaged as the Maestro.) Reportedly, the name was originally acquired to be used by Savage’s brother Lanny “The Genius” Poffo, who was under contract to the promotion for years but never appeared on TV. However, it was eventually used for Savage’s valet/girlfriend Stephanie Bellars instead.

Jonfw2 is reaching into the mythical box of gimmicks:

I was laughing with a buddy the other day about how just about every thing you could come across in life has been turned into a gimmick? Bowler? Mr. Perfect. Dentist? We have TWO of those. Every single athlete from another sport? Yep.

Anyway, here’s a few things we couldn’t come up with ever having been used as a wrestling gimmick. I’m certain we’re wrong about some of these.

SO…has there ever been a wrestling:

– time traveler?
– magician?
– fire fighter?
– knight or medieval figure?
– chef?
– car salesman?

Yeah, most of these have definitely happened.

As far as wrestling time travelers are concerned, you’ve got the New Breed. They were a tag team consisting of young wrestlers Chris Champion and Sean Royal, originally put together in the Florida territory in late 1986 before taking their act to Jim Crockett Promotions in about April of 1987. They both had impressive physiques and some potential in the ring and on the mic, though they were still obviously green around the gills. Unfortunately, they were saddled with the goofy gimmick of being time travelers from the far future year of 2002.

They were given goofy “futuristic” outfits and haircuts and primarily feuded with the team of Jimmy Valiant and Lazer Tron, the latter of whom was Hector Guerrero dressed up in a flashy mask and body suit designed to help him appeal to the kids. However, the New Breed talked about Lazer Tron as though he was an actual robot, since apparently they had those in 2002. They also referred to Dusty Rhodes as “President Rhodes,” which frankly would have been an upgrade over some of the presidents we’ve actually had since 2002.

A wrestling magician? This one is so infamous that I’m guessing Jon knew about it at one point but just forgot. Pro wrestler Harry Del Rios made his in-ring debut for Memphis’s USWA promotion in 1993, where he competed as the Spellbinder.

The Spellbinder was, in fact, a wrestling magician. He wrestled for quite some time in the USWA under that gimmick and, in 1995, he did three matches for the WWF – only one of which was televised – under the name Phantasio, essentially the same gimmick as the Spellbinder. He continued to wrestle for many years after that, including in a tag team called Shock and Awe (named for U.S. military strategy in Operation Iraqi Freedom). His most notable appearance may have been on the first ever Impact Wrestling pay per view, where he was known as Del Rios and adopted a persona remarkably similar to that of “Big Poppa Pump” Scott Steiner.

A wrestling firefighter is another easy one. Curtis Thompson was a journeyman wrestler active between 1987 and 2005. One of the stops during his journeyman career saw him in WCW between 1991 and 1993 where his ring name was Firebreaker Chip. On his way out to the ring, he wore a helmet, yellow pants, and suspenders, not dressing like a firefighter as much as he dressed like a stripper who dressed like a firefighter.

Chip had moderate success in WCW, forming a tag team called the Patriots with Todd Champion. (No relation to New Breed Member Chris Champion.) Todd was portrayed as a military veteran, and the Patriots were announced as hailing from the “hometown” of WCW Special Forces. Chip and Champion did hold the WCW United States Tag Team Titles from August 12 through November 5, 1991.

Jon also asked about knights or other medieval figures. There have been several of those. When Billy Jack Haynes was in WCW in 1991, he wrestled under a hood as Black Blood, essentially a medieval executioner gimmick. Terry Gordy did the same thing in the WWF in 1996 under the less creative name of the Executioner. There have also been plenty of masked knights in wrestling over the years, perhaps most notably Jerry Lawler’s Survivor Series team in 1993 (ultimately taken over by Shawn Michaels). Barry Horowitz was the Red Knight on that team, and he actually kept wrestling under that gimmick on house shows for a couple of months after the Survivor Series, teaming with the Black Knight. While the Black Knight was Jeff Gaylord at the Survivor Series, the role was taken over by Steve Lombardi for the post-SS shots.

But perhaps my favorite medieval knight gimmick comes to us from CHIKARA. One their stars was Lance Steel, a knight allegedly plucked from the Middle Ages via a time machine – which actually makes him an answer to not one but two of Jon’s questions, as he was also a time traveler. Eventually, a second Lance Steel appeared in CHIKARA, with the story being that he was the same guy but from a different period of his life, also brought forward to present day by the time machine. The two Lance Steels formed a tag team which was called . . . you probably guessed it . . . Lancelot.

Chefs are harder to come by in wrestling, but it’s not impossible. There was a wrestler known simply as “The Chef” who competed on Pacific Northwest indies in the late 1990s and early 2000s, including matches with none other than Figure Four Online impresario Bryan Alvarez. However, I don’t know much about his gimmick other than “The Chef” being his ring name.

You also have pro wrestling pizza chef Luigi Primo. A clip featuring Primo slinging dough while in the squared circle went semi-viral in 2022, and it earned him a cameo in AEW, where he was laid out by Ethan Page.

Also, though it wasn’t his gimmick, I think it’s a fun piece of trivia to note that Dennis Knight, the wrestler formerly known as Tex Slazenger, Phineas Godwinn, and Mideon, has found work as a chef following his retirement from the squared circle.

The only thing that I couldn’t find from Jon’s list was an example of a wrestler doing a car salesman gimmick. However, I will say that there are plenty of instances of pro wrestlers doing ads for car dealerships, including Dusty Rhodes and Nord the Barbarian.

Survive if Patrick lets you:

Who would really win if they were in a match together? Gunther or ECW Taz?

First off, I have to give the caveat that anything can happen in a real fight. Everyone always has the chance of getting in a lucky punch or benefiting from an opponent’s unexpected injury, which can lead to an outcome that the smart money would not predict.

That being said, I would favor Gunther in this scenario. There is a reason that weight classes exist in legitimate fighting, and it’s because if you are significantly larger than your opponent, you have a tremendous advantage. A good big man will almost always beat a good little man. Simply by being the much larger combatant, Gunther would likely dominate.

It’s ladies’ night, and Jonfw2 is feeling alright:

Is the current WWE/NXT women’s roster the best women’s roster in wrestling history?

Absolutely not.

Every decently sized joshi promotion from the 1990s through the early 2000s featured more talented rosters top to bottom than what we currently see in WWE. All Japan Women is the best example, but you could also point to groups like GAEA and Arsion/AtoZ.

There’s a chance that joshi groups going back to the 70s and 80s were just as good if not better, but I personally do not have much exposure to that era as compared to the 90s on.

I can see why people who have only ever watched American women’s wrestling might think that modern WWE is the best ever, but people like Manami Toyota, Aja Kong, and Kyoko Inoue worked circles around your Charlotte Flairs and you Bayleys. You also have some some greener folks in the NXT system who are not ready for prime time, while the AJW and GAEA rookies almost always debuted with significantly more polish (and you can watch the documentary GAEA Girls to see why).

Big Al has a hall pass:

I recently read that Vince and Linda McMahon had finally split up last November. In your opinion, why do you think Linda McMahon stayed with Vince for so long, even after many many years of cheating?

Different people have different standards for their marriages. Some people don’t mind their spouse having affairs, and some couples even have explicit agreements allowing the same. Though Vince McMahon may be a creep in other ways, I’m not going to judge him or Linda for staying together despite his relations with other women when, for all we know, she was never bothered by it in the first place. They get to decide what the standards for their own marriage are.

Uzoma wears a neat little collar:

Was Christopher Daniels ever signed with WWF? He vied for the WWF Light Heavyweight Title on two occasions and was considered to be the Higher Power of the Corporate Ministry (which would’ve made him The Undertaker’s boss). Again, was he signed with the eventually renamed company?

He was under a developmental deal for a time in 1998, but it never lead to anything beyond that.

According to Dave Meltzer on an episode of Wrestling Observer Radio several years ago, many people who had Vince McMahon’s ear were fans of Daniels and advocated for him, but Vince just never saw what the big deal was.

Daniels in shoot interviews had chalked things up to his stature, saying that the WWF just wasn’t interested in seriously using guys his size when he was on their radar – and by the time they were using smaller guys, he was committed elsewhere.

Also, it’s probably worth noting that the Fallen Angel did have one important role on camera with the WWF despite never signing beyond that developmental deal. During the Hardy Boys / Edge & Christian feud that involved the two teams dressing as Los Conquistadors, Daniels was one of the Conquistadors at time when the Hardys and E&C had to be on camera at the same time. (The other was Aaron Aguilera, who wrestled as the Hardkore Kidd on the indies, then later as Carlito’s bodyguard Jesus, then later still as Zodiac in All Japan Pro Wrestling.)

Steve is taking a trip to the Batcave:

Because why not, I was just perusing the Wikipedia article for Mike Shaw, who most famously wrestled as Norman the Lunatic in WCW and Bastion Booger in the WWF. Wikipedia claims that Shaw was given the Bastion Booger gimmick — a disgusting, morbidly obese man in an unfortunately revealing singlet — as punishment for his weight. Is there any truth to this? Shaw was already quite fat when the WWF hired him, so I don’t see why they would have punished him in this way.

The Wikipedia comment that you’re referring to is unsourced. Mike Shaw did a shoot interview with RF Video in 2006, well after his career ended and he had no need to be nice to anybody. He never said anything about the gimmick being a punishment, though he did make it clear that he wasn’t a fan of having to do it. In fact, he was point blank asked if he found the character embarrassing, which would be the perfect opportunity for him to say that it was intended to embarrass him. He didn’t. Interestingly, he stated that he was originally supposed to wear an intricate mask and be more of a “gargoyle” character, but that was nixed.

Just in case Shaw was holding back, I also checked the issues of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter that were published around the time of the character’s debut and Shaw’s WWF release and death, and never was it mentioned that the gimmick was a punishment.

Bryan starts the fire:

I understand Bret still being angry at Goldberg for the kick that ended his career , but do you find it hypocritical or at least a little weird he was able to bury the hatchet with Shawn? I mean to me, that was worse because it was intentional. In your opinion do you find that kind of unusual to still be mad about one of them but not the other?

No, not really.

What Michaels did to Hart was shitty, but, at the end of the day, it didn’t do anything to negatively impact Bret’s livelihood. In fact, in transitioning from the WWF to WCW, he was making substantially more money than he ever had in his career and was one of the highest paid wrestlers in the entire industry.

Meanwhile, the incident with Goldberg effectively ended his career and took his livelihood away from him, costing him at least tens of millions of dollars in the process. I can totally understand holding more of a grudge over that than I can the Montreal Screwjob.

We’ll return in seven-ish days, and, as always, you can contribute your questions by emailing [email protected]. You can also leave questions in the comments below, but please note that I do not monitor the comments as closely as I do the email account, so emailing is the better way to get things answered.