Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Ultimate Collection (DVD)

Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Ultimate Collection

Hell has frozen over!
 
Old ol' JR used to always say 'Anything can happen in the WWE!' This DVD proves it. First off, Bret Hart buried the hatchet of Montreal and contributed to the wonderful Bret Hart DVD and now Randy Savage who McMahon is quoted as saying 'I never want his name mentioned again' has his own DVD. This isn't a burial DVD, as they did with the Ultimate Warrior, this is a three disk collection of his greatest moments over his career from his WWE debut in 1985 through his infamous feud with Ricky Steamboat, including arguably (by me anyway) the greatest match of all time at Wrestlemania III, to his WWE Championship victory, feud with Hogan, Warrior, Flair through to his time in WCW.
 
Introduced by Matt Striker and Maria (looking almost Miss Elizabeth-esque) this set is simply a collection of his matches with Striker and Maria acting as buffers between each one. It was obvious that Savage would have no involvement in the set, but I did expect them to treat Savage with at least a few talking heads of discussing feuds and their reaction to him. However, that is not to be. Basically, if you were hoping for a documentary like the Ric Flair set, then you'll be disappointed, but if you were hoping for hours of old skool wrestling then this set is perfect. Going through the set and it's difficult to think of any Legend that Savage didn't have a match with (Hogan, Dibiase, Santana, Steamboat, Flair, Rhodes, Warrior, Roberts even for even older old skool fans Bruno Sammartino!)
 
Now the matches themselves are pretty amazing, but I do feel that the buffers that Striker and Maria provide with little snippets of information are simply not enough to make me care about the matches which follow. If this had been like The Rock's DVD which showed the promos leading to the matches it would have been fine, but this was all just too brief. That being said, there are no matches on these three disks that I couldn't watch and when you consider it included four matches from WCW you know that's saying something. I think unlike many 80s wrestlers such as Hogan who relied on squash matches, Savage did not, and as he was a detail freak you can tell that every moment of every match has been painfully choreographed. Though some wrestlers (such as Flair and Hart) prefer to make it up on the spot, I admire Savage for this detail and the fact that I didn't skip any of the matches proves that WWE finally picked the 'best' of his career and that Savage quite frankly was deserving of such a set.
 
With twenty-three matches over twenty extras in the form of vignettes and extra footage the three disks have been jam-packed with stuff for wrestling fans. The Seventeen promos, mostly from WWE, are great at showing just how great (if a little crazy) that Savage was on the mic. His promo with the Ultimate Warrior as 'The Ultimate Maniacs' really needed subtitles so that an audience could figure out exactly what they were saying. Sadly, however a lot of this is stuff that you may only watch once and it's doubtful you'll watch a random Savage promo unless you are a diehard Macho Man fan.
 
Macho Madness: The Randy Savage Ultimate Collection is one of the better DVD collections without a documentary and fans of Savage and wrestling from the 80s will lap up what this set has to offer. And as with any set that includes it, this is worth owning for the Savage/Steamboat Wrestlemania 3 match alone!