Fifth Draft

“Deep down Randy Poffo always knew there was a Plan B.”

What I Liked: It’s about the Macho Man. Duh. Of course I’m going to love it. His wrestling and promo work (a promo, for those unfamiliar with wrestling terminology, is when a wrestling personality takes a microphone and speaks to the crowd, either live or pre-recorded, to hype up their match) was years ahead of its time, and many wouldn’t recognize it until now. It holds up, and is iconic in a way that has aged. to set the standard for the oddity of what pro wrestling is. Finkel, to his immense credit, never talks it down and always speaks about it as the art form that it is.

What I Noticed: You hear stories about pro wrestlers, the really famous ones, that sometimes make them seem larger than the fictional personas they portray in the ring. To hear some of the tales of Randy, the raw ones, the real ones, is more interesting to me than the supposedly outrageous tales that linger in the locker room. Hearing how he took his baseball bats to a tree after being cut from his team was the most raw, real, relatable thing in a very unrelatable life.

What I Learned: The importance of how those around you influence you more than you could think. To see how the Poffos, as a unit, were so closely connected, and we don’t get the Macho Man, and by extension his influence on our culture at large, without his father’s determination to do 5,000+ sit-ups.

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