Stevie Ray On How Harlem Heat Became Boys With Randy Savage

Harlem Heat was one of the premier tag teams throughout the 1990s in WCW. Booker T and Stevie Ray held the WCW World Tag Team Championships ten times as a team, a record that went unbroken when the belts became inactive in 2001.

The WWE Hall of Famers' tenure in WCW also led to some friendships with iconic wrestlers on the roster, namely "Macho Man" Randy Savage, as Ray spoke about in an interview with The Grue Rume Show. While Ray is hesitant to speak about backstage stories, Harlem Heat's match with Sting and Randy Savage was one thing he was willing to speak on. "That was a very serious situation because we were caught between a rock and a hard place," Ray explained, "We didn't know Randy Savage personally at the time, we only knew him as a wrestler."

The issue stemmed from the agent of the tag team match, the late Mike Graham, proclaiming that Booker T was supposed to kick out of Randy Savage's signature elbow drop. "I looked at my brother and my brother looked at me," Ray recalled, "we kinda looked at each other like, 'did you just hear what I just heard?'"

Booker T and Stevie Ray knew this was a rib, but an irate Savage got incredibly angry at the fact that someone was trying to mess with him. "Randy is about to go nuts, he was livid, and I went 'hey brother, calm down,'" Ray explained, "We'll just change it up, we won't do it."

The finish was changed on the spot, with Savage instead hitting a double-axe handle, to which Stevie made the save. "Ever since that day, Macho Man [considered us] his boys," Stevie concluded.