Diamond Dallas Page vs. Macho Man Randy Savage (Mar 1997 – Oct 1997)

Background

Diamond Dallas Page had spent the early 1990s as a WCW manager, running a stable called The Diamond Mine and helping build acts like Scott Hall's Diamond Studd before deciding, at 35, to become a full-time wrestler himself.[6] He struggled to establish himself in the ring at first, but the Diamond Cutter finisher and a WCW Television Championship win over Renegade at Fall Brawl 1995 gave him a foothold, and by 1997 he had grown into a genuinely popular act standing up to the nWo, without yet being treated as one of the promotion's top stars.[6]

Randy Savage, a former WWF Champion with over two decades in the business by 1997, joined the nWo that February after aligning briefly with Sting.[2] He arrived in WCW's top storyline with Miss Elizabeth, his real-life former wife, at his side as his on-screen manager, and with full creative control over his own booking, a position very few wrestlers in the company held.[7] DDP had already turned down offers to join the nWo from Scott Hall and Kevin Nash, twice, making him an obvious target for the group as it looked to punish holdouts.[2]

Build-up

The feud opened with an angle rather than a match. At Uncensored on March 16, 1997 in North Charleston, Savage and Elizabeth revealed on television that Page and Kimberly, his real-life wife who had been presented on WCW programming as unattached, were actually married, and displayed a photo of Kimberly with "nWo" spray-painted across it in a deliberate act of public humiliation.[1][2] Kimberly was targeted with the same spray paint again in a later confrontation as the feud continued.[1]

Their first match came at Spring Stampede on April 6, a No Disqualification bout that ended with Page hitting the Diamond Cutter for the win.[3] What made the finish remarkable wasn't the match itself but the decision behind it. According to Arn Anderson, who asked Savage what finish he wanted for the bout, Savage answered while lacing his boots: "I think I wanna take the Diamond-Cutter tonight."[5] Savage controlled his own booking at the time, and choosing to lose clean, by his opponent's finisher, to a wrestler with nowhere near his career standing was a real and unusual show of trust.[5] Afterward, Savage told Page simply, "We got our finish for Spring Stampede."[5]

The rivalry kept running through the summer without a clean resolution either way. Savage beat Page in a Falls Count Anywhere match at The Great American Bash on June 15 after Scott Hall interfered with an Outsider's Edge, evening the score on paper even as the Spring Stampede result had already done the real work of elevating Page.[4] At Bash at the Beach on July 13, Savage and Hall beat Page and his new partner Curt Hennig in a tag match built on a miscommunication between Page and Hennig, a wrinkle that spun off into its own brief program between the two babyfaces.[4] DDP and Lex Luger evened things again at Fall Brawl on September 14, beating Savage and Hall in a No Disqualification tag match.[4]

The Matches

The program's official blow-off came at Halloween Havoc on October 26, 1997 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena, a Las Vegas Sudden Death match, WCW's version of a last-man-standing bout, that ran 18:07.[4] Page appeared to have the advantage late when a man dressed as Sting, his real-life ally at the time, came to ringside; it was Hollywood Hogan in disguise, and he hit Page with a baseball bat, leaving him unable to beat the referee's ten count.[4]

The finish gave Savage the win on the card's own terms, but by that point the two men's Spring Stampede result had already done the lasting work of the story. Page had entered the year as a popular midcarder standing up to the nWo; by the time Halloween Havoc aired, he was a main-event act with a Diamond Cutter win over one of the promotion's biggest legends behind him.[5][6]

Aftermath

Page's push continued through the rest of 1997 and into 1998, building on the credibility Savage had handed him at Spring Stampede; within a couple of years he was a multiple-time world champion, something that would have looked implausible for a 35-year-old former manager before this program began.[6] Savage stayed a top act in WCW into 1998, moving through other storylines including further entanglements with Elizabeth and the shifting nWo hierarchy.[2]

Pro Wrestling Illustrated's readers voted the Page-Savage rivalry Feud of the Year for 1997, formal recognition of a program that had mixed real personal-life material, Page and Kimberly's actual marriage, with genuine in-ring generosity from a veteran who rarely extended it.[1][6]

Behind the Scenes

The defining moment of the entire feud happened away from the cameras, in the ordinariness of a locker room before a house show in Florence, South Carolina, when Savage told Arn Anderson he wanted to take the Diamond Cutter that night as a test run before doing it again on pay-per-view.[5] Savage, with full control over his own finishes, had no obligation to make that call, and Anderson's reported surprise at hearing it underlines how unusual the gesture was from a wrestler of Savage's stature.[5]

Page didn't let the gesture go unacknowledged. That November, after fielding his own share of thank-you calls from wrestlers he had helped, Page called Savage and left him a message: "Without you, I'm not sitting in this spot in life right now. I really appreciate it, man."[5] Savage's reaction, by Page's account, went well beyond a passing exchange. Two weeks later Savage pulled him aside and said he had played the voicemail for his own father, who told him, "I never even HEARD of anyone getting a message like this from one of the boys."[5] Savage told Page, "It meant everything to me," and gave him a hug.[5]

The Kimberly angle sits less comfortably in retrospect than the mentorship story does. Using DDP's real marriage as a storyline reveal, and physically targeting Kimberly with spray paint on camera, was standard nWo-era shock booking, but it used a real relationship and a real person outside the business as the material.[1][2]

Legacy

The feud is remembered today less for its match quality, none of the pay-per-view bouts are considered classics on their own, than for what it did for Diamond Dallas Page's career and for what it revealed about Randy Savage as a competitor willing to put a lesser-established act over convincingly.[6] Page has continued to credit the Spring Stampede result as the turning point that made him a main-event player rather than a solid upper-midcarder, a rare instance of a wrestler publicly and repeatedly crediting a specific opponent's generosity for his own rise.[5][6]

Savage's willingness to do it, control his own finish and still choose to lose clean to a wrestler years behind him in seniority, is frequently cited in retrospectives as one of the more selfless real-life moments of the nWo era, standing in contrast to the period's reputation for backstage politics and hoarded spotlight.[5]

See Also

Sources & Further Listening

1. "Macho Man vs. DDP: 8 Things Fans Forget About Their Feud" — TheSportster. https://www.thesportster.com/wrestling/macho-man-vs-ddp-feud-forgotten-moments-wcw/
2. "DDP Vs Randy Savage Is The Most Underrated WCW Feud Ever" — TheSportster. https://www.thesportster.com/wcw-ddp-randy-savage-underrated-feud/
3. "Taking the Diamond Cutter: Revisiting DDP vs. Randy Savage at Spring Stampede 1997" — Last Word on Sports. https://lastwordonsports.com/prowrestling/2020/04/06/taking-the-diamond-cutter-revisiting-ddp-vs-randy-savage-at-spring-stampede-1997/
4. "WCW Halloween Havoc 1997 Retrospective: Diamond Dallas Page vs. Randy Savage" — WrestleZone. https://www.wrestlezone.com/features/best-wrestling/1147701-wcw-halloween-havoc-1997-retrospective-diamond-dallas-page-vs-randy-savage
5. "Heartwarming Story Behind Randy Savage and DDP Feud" — Pro Wrestling Stories. https://prowrestlingstories.com/pro-wrestling-stories/ddp-randy-savage/
6. Diamond Dallas Page — Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_Dallas_Page
7. "Classic Rivalries: Diamond Dallas Page vs. 'Macho Man' Randy Savage" — WWE.com. https://www.wwe.com/classics/classic-rivalries-macho-man

Further Listening

• DDP's own interviews and the Positively Dallas podcast, where he has repeatedly told the Spring Stampede story in his own words
• Randy Savage's WWE Hall of Fame retrospective material touching on his WCW run and the wrestlers he helped elevate
• Kimberly Page's own interviews discussing the on-screen angle built around her real marriage to Diamond Dallas Page