If you are quarantined in, a wrestling fan, and looking for something to read (this was kid of interesting):
Ooohhh yeah! Why Randy 'Macho Man' Savage is wrestling's enduring antihero
I CALLED LANNY POFFO the other day. Lanny is a former professional wrestler, and his bones play a sonata now anytime he stands up. He's 65 and divorced, and he still peppers his everyday conversation with the sweaty aphorisms of his life's work. "I'd rather have your envy than your pity!" he crows at one point as we chat about Netflix shows. Later, he explains how he spent most of his career cast as a loser in the ring. "You see, I was what we call a jabroni," he says in the way you might mention you once worked in sales.
Lanny tells a story. It is 1977. He and his big brother are just getting started in top-tier wrestling but haven't really broken through. One night, his brother says to him, "Lanny, I'm really struggling with my interviews." The interview is the part of the gig where a wrestler has to hype the match and make everyone watching feel
something: love, hate, disgust, patriotism, xenophobia, whatever. It just has to be something. The worst wrestler is the boring one.
Wrestling is the ultimate copycat business, so Lanny suggests that his brother think of a wrestler named Pampero Firpo, whom the boys used to see on TV when they were teenagers living in Hawaii for a year with their dad. Firpo had a sort of croaky, gruff, ethnically ambiguous voice, and he used to end commercials by shouting, "You are watching ... the No. 1 station in Hawaii!" The ads ran all day.
Lanny tells his brother to imagine Firpo's voice -- the way it dragged like a bag of rocks -- and make it his own. A few seconds pass, and suddenly Lanny's brother pipes up.
"You ... are watching," he says, his volume starting at a whisper and rising roughly, like the words are straining to get out of his throat, "the No. 1 station in HAWAII, OH YEEEAAHH! OOOOHHHH YEAH!!!"
It is gold. They both love it right away. And Lanny laughs now, maybe a bit wistfully, as he recalls the transformation. In that moment, Lanny's brother, Randy Poffo, becomes Randy "Macho Man" Savage right in front of him.
Entire article (pretty long article too):
https://www.espn.com/wwe/story/_/id...-macho-man-savage-wrestling-enduring-antihero
