Macho Man Randy Savage sacrificed some money to get his brother a job with WCW.
Speaking on the latest episode of his 83 Weeks podcast, Bischoff addressed the decision to sign Lanny Poffo and whether or not the strategy behind it was just to make Randy Savage happy. Here is what the former WCW President had to say:
"Partially, but, just like I said earlier on about things going on behind the scenes that nobody really knows or understands or is aware of. Here you had a situation where Randy, who loved his brother dearly, and the same is true for Lanny with respect to Randy. But Randy was in a great position. Here is a guy who brought in a sponsor that covered his entire salary. It didn't cost me a nickel to bring Randy Savage in because I was a smart mocker futher, and I was able to negotiate and make that happen in a way that everybody won. Slim Jim won. Randy won. WCW won. We got a major talent for zero net dollars out of pocket."
Bischoff says that Macho Man came to him about getting Lanny a job but initially denied the request because he couldn't justify the expense. While negotiating his next deal with the company, though, Randy explained that he would take less money if they brought Lanny in. With it now having zero effect on his budget, Bischoff agreed.
"Randy, because he loved his brother as much as he did, until the day he died, wanted Lanny to have an opportunity, financially and hopefully at some point an opportunity to perform in the ring. Randy came to me on behalf of Lanny -- I'm not sure Lanny even knew about it. I don't know, I've never talked to Lanny about this. Randy came to me and said, I want you to hire my brother. My response was, Randy, I can't. I can't justify it.
Randy was in the midst, not in the midst, but we were talking about renegotiating his next deal, not renegotiating but negotiating his next deal. Randy made it clear that he would take less money. We had talked about that number. We were pretty comfortable with it. Early on, wasn’t a big deal, but Randy said, I'll take less, just bring Lanny in.
So of course I did it. Yeah, in the hopes that there was a story there for Lanny. That there was an opportunity. I didn't know what it was, but if he's under contract, and we can start thinking about it, depending on what evolves during the course of a month or three months or six months, there may have been a role that would have made sense for Lanny. But at the end of it all, it didn't matter to me because, just like bringing in Randy, because of the Slim Jim deal, bringing in Lanny had zero effect on my budget, zero," Bischoff said.
Addressing criticism about the decision and the luckiness of Lanny to have someone like Randy in his corner, Bischoff believes we should all be so lucky as to have someone as caring as Randy Savage fighting for us.
"So, I would say to Dave Meltzer. Yeah. It must be nice to have a brother in a high position in a company like WCW at the time but it would be even nicer to have a brother that was willing to take less to give you an opportunity. That says everything anybody needs to know about Randy, about Lanny, who I have nothing but respect for," Bischoff said.
Lanny Poffo was signed by WCW in 1995 and remained with the company until 1999. During those years he remained, for the most part, inactive. In 2015, he would induct his brother into the WWE Hall of Fame.
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