RANDY KNEW he should have given Vince proper notice and acted more professionally towards the man who had made him into an international star, but he had an old score to settle. Back in November 1987, the WWF had held a battle royal at their monthly Meadowlands Arena house show, with the twist being that it only featured legends from a previous era. Men like Lou Thesz and Nick Bockwinkel, who had little time for Vince and his twisted carnival brand of what they knew as pro wrestling, but still appreciated the payday.
In his own heyday, Savage's father Angelo Poffo had worked with a number of the veterans booked in the match, and hadn't seen several of them in years. A few had called him and said how they were looking forward to seeing him in New Jersey, but Angelo had to grudgingly admit that he wasn't booked. Angelo confessed to Randy that he would love nothing more than to have been booked at the show to catch up with his old friends, some of whom he expected he might never see again due to their advancing ages. "Don't you worry, I'll get it done," Randy declared to his father confidently.
Not long after that conversation, Savage talked to the office and asked them if they could accommodate Angelo in the bout, but as his brother Lanny Poffo would recall, "The reason was vague, but the answer was no." Savage was fiercely loyal to his family and it had devastated him that he was not able to give his father that final swansong with his contemporaries. He mused that he was one of the biggest stars in the company and yet Vince couldn't even do him one small favour on a throwaway house show. "From now on it is just business," he told his bemused brother, "Fuck the WWF."
Savage carried the resentment and bitterness about that night with him for the rest of his life, once ruminating to Lanny, "I did it like Martin Luther King, I should have done it like Malcolm X; by any means necessary." Vince had no idea what damage the slight did to Savage's psyche. He didn't even know there was a problem, it was just another one of many requests on a typically busy day that had slipped his mind. Vince wasn't the only one that Randy held responsible; he also blamed veteran road agents 'Chief' Jay Strongbow and Pat Patterson for the rebuff. He had vowed from that day onwards to never give either of them any respect in front of the boys ever again. Strongbow actually competed in the battle royal on that fateful night.
He was eliminated from the action early by Lou Thesz and he landed awkwardly on his arm and broke it. Backstage Strongbow complained to the other boys, "Thesz broke my arm!" to which Savage instantly shot back at him, "Lou Thesz didn't break your arm, you broke your arm because you're too fat to be in the ring; you're an embarrassment." As Lanny remembers, "From that point on, Randy intentionally became a locker-room asshole, and he was good at it. He could get away with it because of who he was, and he refused to give anyone any respect if he didn't like them."
