Jake “The Snake” Roberts is one of the more tragic figures in the pro wrestling community, and when he crossed paths with Randy Savage in 1991, dark clouds loomed on the horizon. Roberts’ gimmick involved live snakes, and as Pro Wrestling Stories tells us, it soon became evident that Savage wasn’t particularly ecstatic when he found out that his upcoming match with Roberts would end with him getting bitten by a snake. In fact, Roberts says that he eventually had to let the snake bite him in the locker room to convince Savage that the snake wasn’t dangerous and that he wasn’t part of some strange anti-Savage plot.   

When the match took place, though, things went extremely awry. Though the snake bit Savage as planned, it soon became apparent that the animal wouldn’t let go. “I’m trying [to pull it off] — I’m trying,” Roberts said. “And the snake’s just gnawing on his arm. It’s going on for like a minute now, you know?” 

In a 2004 interview with IGN, Savage discussed the aftermath of the incident, which ended up hospitalizing him. “About five days later I had a fever and went to the hospital with a 104-degree fever,” he said. “It’s unbelievable to walk into the hospital and tell the doctor I had a snake bite.” Macho Man ultimately survived his ordeal — but curiously, the snake died soon after the incident. “He was de-venomized, but maybe I wasn’t,” Savage said. 

For a long time, the most important figure in Randy Savage’s professional and personal life was the same person: Elizabeth Ann Hulette, whom you probably know better by her wrestling moniker, Miss Elizabeth. As Sports Illustrated tells us, Macho Man and Miss Elizabeth were a wrestler and his valet, but also husband and wife. This actually applied to both their in-ring roles and real-life situation — they got married for real in a small ceremony in 1984, and their characters followed suit in a rather more opulent in-ring ceremony at 1991’s SummerSlam at Madison Square Garden.

Unfortunately, the fact that their knot was doubly tied didn’t translate to a “forever after” scenario. Savage was an extremely jealous man and tried to protect — or, as it often appeared, hide — Elizabeth from the prying eyes of fellow wrestlers. As a result, the locker room was quite irked by the way Savage acted — but wary of him, too. “If you even looked at Elizabeth the wrong way, then, Holy s**t,” Hulk Hogan described Savage’s jealous rages. “Randy would freak out. If you ever wanted to get him lit up, you’d just have to look at Liz.”

If you think this was a rather unhealthy way to maintain a marriage, Miss Elizabeth ultimately agreed and filed for divorce in 1992. To add insult to injury, Savage’s later WCW tenure used their divorce as part of a storyline (per Bleacher Report). 

In 2008, Bleacher Report wrote that “Macho Man” Randy Savage was blacklisted from the WWE. The idea of one of the biggest names in pro wrestling being banned from working with the biggest wrestling promotion is a strange one and begs the question: What exactly did Savage do to get on WWE owner Vince McMahon’s bad side? 

In an industry as rife with rumor as professional wrestling, it may be impossible to ever find out the truth behind the story. However, it’s clear that the relationship between Savage and the WWE became rather strained around the year 1994 (when the WWE was known as the WWF). At the time, his contract was nearing its end, and he was (seemingly) happily pulling double duty as a color commentator and occasional mid-card wrestler — only to abscond to the rival promotion, WCW, the second he could. Some say that this broke a verbal agreement he had with McMahon. Others have speculated that the WWE owner was bitter because Savage’s departure meant the company also lost the Slim Jim ad dollar, since the meat snack was so associated with the Macho Man. It has been insinuated that another factor was the sheer humiliation of Savage signing with a bitter enemy just as the WWE magazine with him on the cover came out. As SportsKeeda reports, there’s even an odd rumor that Savage had an affair with McMahon’s daughter, Stephanie. 

Regardless of what really provoked the WWE’s ire, the promotion basically purged all mentions of Savage for years.

“Macho Man” Randy Savage lived an intensely physical life, and he suffered his share of nasty injuries over the years. According to Sports Illustrated, his first major injury came before he even started wrestling. In 1973, he was still trying to make it as a baseball player when an incident described as a “home plate collision” wrecked his right shoulder so badly that he had to switch his throwing hand. As Bleacher Report tells us, Savage’s actual wrestling career wasn’t much kinder to his body. In fact, toward the end of his life, he often talked about the daily pains he lived with.

Curiously, one of the worst injuries of the Macho Man’s life had nothing to do with his dangerous in-ring endeavors. It came from acting, of all things. In 2002, Savage played a fearsome wrestler called Bonesaw McGraw in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man. In this role, he got to battle Spider-Man (Tobey Maguire) himself — but the price for this prestige was high. The fight required several takes of a particularly nasty bump that involves McGraw landing on his head, and being a professional wrestler, Savage refused to use a stuntman. As a result, his neck was more or less irreparably wrecked. “He needed a lot of physical therapy,” Savage’s brother, wrestler Lanny Poffo, said. “But he was never the same. Instead of turning his neck to see you, he turned his torso.”