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BOOKS

This week’s newsletter is going to be a little different because as I’m sure you’ve heard, Leapin’ Lanny Poffo, AKA, The Genius, AKA, the brother of the Macho Man Randy Savage passed away suddenly Thursday.

As you all know, I’ve been hard at work writing the definitive biography of the Macho Man for 5-6 months now. And although it’s a book I’ve wanted to write since I was a kid, back when we first had interest from publishers a few years ago, I wouldn’t go ahead with it unless I knew Lanny was on board and that I’d be able to talk to him.

I couldn’t imagine doing a book on Macho without interviewing his brother. They were best friends. They were tag team partners back in the day. They grew up in wrestling together, from the small territories to the ICW to WWE, and they grew old together. They had a wonderful relationship with each other and with their parents.

So as the proposal was being reviewed by publishers, I exhausted several avenues to get in touch with Lanny, which was tough because he spent much of the year in Ecuador and largely stayed off social media, save for Facebook posts and a select few blogs he worked with.

In an incredible coincidence, someone I interviewed for my book, 1996, knew Lanny well, and after even more discussions, my buddy helped me finally get in touch with Lanny and he essentially vouched for me.

By this time, the proposal had been sitting around for over a year, with my own green light hinging on access to Lanny. If he was against the idea or didn’t want to be interviewed for the book, I wasn’t gonna do it. From a personal perspective and journalist perspective, it wouldn’t feel right…

When we finally spoke, I laid out my vision for the project and why I wanted to write it. I explained what Macho meant to me as a kid and why it was so important to me to be able to interview him, specifically, about his family and brother.

Lanny then asked me a bunch of questions about Macho - a test of sorts - and I guess I passed because we spoke for almost two hours after that. He was funny and gracious and lit up when talking about his parents and his brother and he said he was cool with me writing the book (man, that felt good). He also offered to help clarify anything or answer any questions as I worked on the manuscript.

Since then I’ve pulled over 300+ articles, clippings and stories on Randy and Lanny and I’ve lost count of the number of interviews I’ve done. I’ve talked to Randy’s childhood neighbors and most of his high school baseball team and coaches and minor league teammates and philanthropists he worked with and extras on Spider-Man and a ton of wrestlers, including Hacksaw Jim Duggan, who announced the sad news about Lanny on Thursday.

Lanny was always available and as I’ve been writing, I kept a running list of small details and questions that I wanted to ask him next time we spoke. I called them “Lanny Qs”. As I got an e-mail about his passing, I had the list of questions open next to me on my desk. A surreal moment. Life happens fast.

I’d venture to say that nobody has spent more time studying and researching Randy and the Poffos the last half-year than me. Lanny was a fun-loving guy, but he took his legacy seriously, his family’s legacy seriously and his brother’s legacy seriously. And I’ve been taking their legacy seriously with my Macho Man biography. My condolences to his family and the many lifelong friends he had in the wrestling business.

I know this isn’t the typical Books & Biceps this week, but I’ll leave you with this awesome sneak peak from the book - a small excerpt of Lanny talking about Randy’s lifting habits in the gym and what he benched:

BICEPS

Macho Man: Life of a Savage (brief excerpt):

“We tried to workout every day,” Lanny said. “I would do push-ups and squats in the locker room before the match. You got idle time in there so you can do something. But I also belonged to gyms all over. If I had time I’d get there early and lift. Nothing heavy. My brother rebelled against that. He thought he needed to get big quick.”

If Lanny and Angelo’s lifting motto was “nothing heavy”, then Randy’s motto was “the heavier the better”.

Whenever he entered a gym he went straight for the classic Olympic lifts. He’d discovered Mike Mentzer’s Heavy Duty program, which involved taking muscles to complete failure with heavy weights, perfect form and high intensity. Mentzer eventually won the 1979 Mr. Universe with a perfect score and the 1979 IFBB Mr. Olympia heavyweight division.

Mentzer’s routine spoke to Randy. Go heavy. Go hard. Go big. It worked well. After hovering around 200 pounds for a while he finally broke through and began inching to 205 and above on a diet of milk, eggs, meat and carbs.

He also began putting up power lifter-type numbers on several lifts.

“His biggest accomplishment was that he bench pressed 435 pounds for 5 reps,” Lanny said. “Randy swallowed everything Joe Weider’s Muscle Builder magazine ever wrote. I tried the vegan thing for a while and I was into the overall health and fitness, but Randy was into one thing: just get big.”

RIP Lanny. And thank you.

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Have a great weekend! - Jon