Popular wrestler Randy Savage dies

The Seminole fire department responded to the scene to provide medical care, and he was transported to Largo Memorial Hospital, where he died at 9:25 a.m. The incident remains under investigation and an autopsy will be performed over the weekend.

Savage’s wife, Barbara Lynn Poffo, who he had known from his days as a minor league baseball player in Florida, long before he met his famous first wife, Elizabeth Hulette, was also in the car. She suffered minor injuries.

Savage was best known in wrestling for a storyline that serves as a fond childhood memory to this day for wrestling fans, both lapsed and current.

It was a one-year plot which started at WrestleMania IV in 1988, in Atlantic City, N.J., when Hogan, who was taking time off wrestling for a movie role in real life, helped Savage “win” the finals of a tournament for the World Wrestling Federation (now World Wrestling Entertainment) championship, beating “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase.

During the postmatch celebration, Savage gave Hogan a glare as Hogan was celebrating too closely with “The Lovely Elizabeth,” Savage’s real-life wife. The WWF teased tension between the two, who remained tag-team partners, throughout 1988 and into the following year.

It climaxed on a live NBC prime time TV special on Feb. 3, 1989, as Savage exploded with jealousy on a live NBC special and blamed Hogan for accidentally “injuring” Elizabeth, leading to the end of the team and a full-on rivalry in which Elizabeth sided with Hogan. The match drew a 9.7 Nielsen rating.

This led to an encounter at WrestleMania V, on April 2, 1989, also in Atlantic City, where Hogan defeated Savage and won the championship. At the time, it was the biggest pay-per-view wrestling event ever, doing more than 760,000 buys, a record that would stand until 2000, with the onset of the “Stone Cold” Steve Austin and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson era.

While Hulette and Savage had been married since 1984, a year before Savage joined the WWF, in 1991, the WWF promoted a storyline reconciliation between the two moments after Savage had lost a “retirement” match to “The Ultimate Warrior” at WrestleMania VII in Los Angeles. A storyline wedding between the two was held on PPV in Madison Square Garden a few months later.

But shortly after that mock wedding, the couple separated in real life and Elizabeth left the wrestling business for many years. They officially divorced in late 1992.

Hulette died on May 1, 2003, at the age of 42, while living in an Atlanta suburb with wrestling star Larry “Lex Luger” Pfohl, of an accidental overdose from a combination of drugs.

Savage’s other most famous match during wrestling’s 1980s golden era was on March 29, 1987, at WrestleMania III, before a then-pro wrestling record crowd of 78,000 at the Pontiac, Mich., Silverdome. While Hogan vs. Andre the Giant was the main event, Savage’s match with Ricky Steamboat over the Intercontinental title was generally considered the best WWF match of that era, a fast-paced, back-and-forth battle won by Steamboat.

From the late 1970s until the early ’90s, Savage was considered one of the great in-ring workers in the business. In his prime, he was a quick and fearless daredevil known for his intensity, which bordered on scary at times. His unique interviews were among the most recognizable in the industry, imitated by people in and out of wrestling to this day.

However, his national fame didn’t come until 1985 with WWF because his family ran a renegade wrestling promotion based out of Kentucky and were unofficially blacklisted from the mainstream of the industry for several years.

“I remember in 1980 when we were talking about new talent in St. Louis, and [promoter] Pat O’Connor told me, the best young talent in the business is Randy Savage, but we can’t use him,” remembered Larry Matysik, a longtime wrestling announcer and promoter out of St. Louis. Savage and his family sued the then-dominant National Wrestling Alliance at one point, claiming restraint of trade, but the case never went to trial as many of the key witnesses on the Poffo family side were hired away by NWA promoters.

In his early 40s, Savage was being phased out of in-ring competition by WWF promoter Vince McMahon Jr., and in 1994, he signed with rival World Championship Wrestling, following the lead of Hogan, who had signed there a few months earlier.

He was back in the ring as one of the major stars in that organization through 1999, including a period from the spring of 1996 through the spring of 1998 when it was the wrestling business’ leading promotion. By that point Savage had suffered a number of serious injuries from his years of high-flying, physical wrestling style. When his contract expired and the company, bleeding money by that time, didn’t offer him similar money for a new deal, he opted to leave the company.

Savage was intense and driven in everything he did. He played minor league baseball from 1971-74 in the St. Louis Cardinals, Cincinnati Reds and Chicago White Sox farm systems. He wrestled during the offseason, often under a mask to hide his identity from his baseball employers, but sometimes under his real name, as part of a family unit with his father, Angelo, and brother Lanny.

An outfielder, after he blew out his right shoulder, making him unable to throw with any force, he taught himself to throw left-handed in an attempt to continue his career.

“I saw his tryout with the St. Louis Cardinals in 1971,” remembered Matysik. “Man, he could hit. He was a little squirt, I don’t think he was more than 165 pounds at the time.”

He batted .232 with nine home runs and 66 RBIs in his final season of pro ball, with Tampa of the Class-A Florida State League, before turning his attention full time to wrestling.

Savage also appeared as an actor in a number of television shows, often playing himself. His best known role, of course, was as the legendary Slim Jim pitchman, but he also played the role of wrestler Bonesaw McGraw in the 2002 “Spider-Man” movie.

World Wrestling Entertainment released an official statement on Friday afternoon.

“WWE is saddened to learn of the passing of one of the greatest superstars of his time, Randy Poffo, aka Randy “Macho Man” Savage. Poffo was under contract with WWE from 1985 to 1993 and held both the WWE and Intercontinental championships. Our sincerest condolences go out to his family and friends. We wish a speedy recovery to his wife Lynn. Poffo will be greatly missed by WWE and his fans.”

`The Conspirator' is stately to a fault

Robert Redford's latest film, "The Conspirator," explores a time in American history that most of us probably never knew about, or at least forgot: the 1865 trial of Mary Surratt, a boarding house owner whose son was suspected of helping John Wilkes Booth assassinate Abraham Lincoln.

It should be tense and thrilling, full of rich, powerful performances; instead, it'll make you feel like you should be taking notes in preparation for a high-school exam. And like the last film Redford directed, the terrorism drama "Lions for Lambs," it's painfully preachy and sanctimonious.

James McAvoy stars as Frederick Aiken, a 28-year-old Civil War hero for the Union who's now the lawyer assigned to defend Mary (Robin Wright), the lone woman charged in the case. Being young and idealistic - and functioning as the kind of character Redford himself would have played decades ago - Aiken says he doesn't know whether Mary is guilty of conspiracy, but he feels she deserves a fair trial.

The entire nation is against her - and against him, too, by association. But Kevin Kline, as the power-hungry Secretary of War Edwin Stanton, makes it clear that someone must pay for the president's death. It may as well be Mary Surratt.

Redford's film, based on a script by James D. Solomon, is stately and respectable to a fault: It's too safe. It feels the need to bang us over the head with how important it is. And Redford is trying way too hard to make these events from a century and a half ago seem like a relevant metaphor for where we are as a nation post-9/11.

Nobody ever evolves here; "The Conspirator" doesn't offer characters so much as human representations of principles. Aiken is always determined and high-minded (and Alexis Bledel as his girlfriend is always sweet and boring.) Mary remains the stoic martyr, proudly prepared to do whatever she must to protect her son, until the very end. Stanton is always unscrupulously conniving and out for blood.

Even the film's aesthetic motif is static and suffocating. Redford (with the help of cinematographer Newton Thomas Sigel) shoots nearly all his interiors the same way: dark rooms pierced with shafts of misty, unforgiving sunlight. Whether they're meant to provide enlightenment or cast blame, they feel repetitive.

Sure, "The Conspirator" has an excellent, pedigreed supporting cast including Tom Wilkinson, Colm Meaney, Danny Huston and Stephen Root in one great scene. (Justin Long, meanwhile, shows up with the worst fake facial hair known to mankind as one of Aiken's fellow soldiers, and his presence feels awkward and way too contemporary.)

Shakira donates $400,000 to rebuild Haiti school

PORT-AU-PRINCE: Colombian pop star Shakira donated $400,000 Thursday to rebuild a school that was severely damaged in the January 2010 quake that leveled much of the Haitian capital.

The singer signed an agreement with the Inter-American Development Bank, which will match her contribution to rebuild the Elie Dubois school, one of the island's oldest, built in the early 20th century.

"I am delighted to have the opportunity to help you make your dream come true," Shakira told about a hundred students and nuns from the school, speaking in French.

"I would like to tell the girls of the Elie Dubois school that you should seize the opportunity for education," she added, saying she was heartened by the warm reception she had received. The star then performed a brief dance.

The non-profit group Architecture for Humanity will rebuild two of the school's buildings, with a target completion date in 12 to 14 months from now.

"In the name of the children and the government, I would like to thank the IDB and Shakira for their support to the cause of education," said Education Minister Joel Desrosiers Jean-Pierre.