Randy Savage’s Left Knee – 1992

Scott,

One thing, I think, that gets glossed over about Savage’s 1992 run is his masterful selling of the beating his left knee took at the hands of Ric Flair at WM VIII. I may be mistaken, but I’m pretty sure that knee injury played into almost every match he had from when he won the title at WM VIII to when he eventually dropped it to Flair on Prime Time. Some guys have a hard enough time selling an injury to a body part through to the end of a match, but Savage sold that knee injury for about FIVE MONTHS or so.

Short of a gimmick like Bob Orton’s cast or DDP’s taped ribs, are there any other examples of a wrestler selling an injury that well for that long? Was Savage dealing with legit knee issues at the time?

Thanks.

​Oh yeah, Savage had been forced out of baseball due to bad knees, and then years of dropping the big elbow and taking all the impact on his knees pretty much destroyed them. By the time he got to his reinvention in WCW in 1999 guys were terrified of it because he’d have to put the impact on his elbow and it was just killing people left and right. ​So it wasn’t even really selling, although it DID give him a built-in storyline for pretty much every match from then on, with the heel working on the knee for the whole match before he made the comeback with the big elbow.