Almost weekly, we heard the terms “The Queen”, “The Empress of Tomorrow”, “The King”, and various other royalty titles. It’s a moniker several have picked up as part of their characters, and it makes sense. The thing is, as much as they and others try, they’ll never be wrestling’s true royalty. That will always be Randy “Macho Man” Savage and Miss Elizabeth.
It’s been several years since they passed, but Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth remain in the memory of every fan that ever saw them enter the ring. Their real life love gave birth to some of the greatest heel and face turns in history, and even the destruction of one of the greatest tag teams at the time, the Mega Powers Mega Powers (Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan).
Love at first sight
This is often scoffed at as a cliché, but according to friends and family, that’s what happened when Savage entered the gym where Elizabeth worked as a receptionist. The story goes that she was immediately taken with him and his red eyes. Yep, you heard that right. She allegedly even commented on how red they were, to which he responded with, “You should see them from this side.”
The story may vary depending on who’s telling it, but the consensus is this is when things started between them.
While there was little doubt they loved each other, Savage was allegedly paranoid and intense individual while Elizabeth was demure and often silent. This was portrayed perfectly during their interviews, as Savage often cut her off of silenced her, even going to far as to tell her to be quiet at times.
This was an act, but it was based on their real life relationship. Because of his reported paranoia, Savage wouldn’t allow her to go out on the town without him while they were on the road. He wanted to protect her, to keep her safe from anyone looking to do her or him harm.
According to Linda Bollea, Hogan’s wife, this situation was alleviated some through his friendship with Hulk Hogan. Since Linda was often on the road with Hogan, it allowed her and Elizabeth to become quick and close friends as there weren’t a lot of married women besides them.
From what Linda has stated in the Dark Side of the Ring documentary, it sounds like she was an outlet, and beacon of normalcy for Elizabeth during those times.
Eventually, things came to a head with Savage allegedly accusing Hogan of having an affair with Elizabeth. WWE, seeing the opportunity for some great storylines and television, mimicked the breakup by having their tag team, Mega Powers, break up from jealousy over Elizabeth. As a result, storyline-wise, Savage “lost everything” as he lost the world heavyweight championship to Hogan at WrestleMania 5 and Elizabeth was replaced with Sensational Sherri.
All things must come to an end
Following his defeat of “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan to win the King of the Ring tournament in 1989, Savage was billed as the Macho King and worked with Sensational Sherri (former women’s champion and future hall of famer), who became Queen Sherri. He had numerous feuds during this period, including Hulk Hogan and Dusty Rhodes, but his best was yet to come.
Savage’s face turn came to an end at WrestleMania 7 in a phenomenal “Retirement” match between himself and the Ultimate Warrior. After exchanging finishers, the Ultimate Warrior was victorious, effectively forcing Savage into retirement. Queen Sherri didn’t take that well and began verbally and physically abusing Savage.
Miss Elizabeth, who was at ringside, climbed into the ring to confront Sherri. She grabbed Sherri by the hair and threw her out of the ring, reuniting her and Savage. Fans were in tears over their reconciliation, but more came when Savage held the ropes open for her, a reversal of how she’d previously hold the ropes open for him.
With their real life marriage on the rocks, Savage proposed to Elizabeth on a 1991 episode of WWF Superstars of Wrestling and she said yes. They were later married at 1991’s SummerSlam in the heavily promoted “Match Made in Heaven.”
The newly “married” couple faced a new storyline adversary as Savage entered into one of his most memorable feuds featuring Jake “The Snake” Roberts, Savage was to be tied up in the ropes and be bite by a defanged King Cobra.
This incident is (in)famous for a couple of reasons. The first being that Savage’s paranoia, according to Roberts, had him make Roberts have the cobra bite him to prove it was defanged or he wouldn’t do the match. Of course, this pissed Roberts off, but he made the cobra bite him on the leg to prove he wasn’t trying to kill Savage.
The second was once their match ended and Savage was tied up in the rope as planned. Roberts fanned the back of the cobra’s head to fire it up, and the cobra latched onto Savage’s arm as was the plan. However, Roberts would admit years later that he could get the cobra to let go. Eventually, a teary-eyed Elizabeth was joined by Vince McMahon and others who came out to help. Roberts said McMahon was yelling at him to get the snake off Savage, but it refused to let go until it was ready.
Eventually, their real life marriage came to an end, and in August 1992 they divorced. When it was finalized, Savage had a statement printed in WWF Magazine that informed the fans he and Elizabeth were no longer together, and he thanked the fans for their years of support.
While Savage continued to work for McMahon for two more years, he and Elizabeth eventually went to WCW, where she managed him yet again.
While the WWE has tried to duplicate their relationship to feed off the fans’ love for certain characters, nothing has come close to reaching the level of that Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth established. We loved them with all our hearts. We wept for them, with them, and for them yet again.
Some things are meant to last a lifetime, and the Randy Savage and Miss Elizabeth’s “Match Made in Heaven” is one of them.
