One more show: Ric Savage’s last pinfall
Ric Savage pleads with the ref to let him enter the ring. Kyle Perrotti photo
Heavy Metal Ric Savage couldn’t stand it. He was helpless, sidelined while his tag-team partner, Shane Austin, took a beating from a pair of masked maniacs.
Just when things looked their bleakest, after barely breaking free of a chokehold, Austin mustered the strength to tag Savage in. Savage went to work, dishing out elbows like hot biscuits on a Sunday morning before grabbing each villain by the neck and banging their heads together like Moe would do Larry and Curly.
He secured the three-count on the pin and won the day.
But he wasn’t done. He had to get pinned one last time. After all, this was Heavy Metal Ric Savage’s last match, and a professional wrestler must go out on their back.
Savage’s final bout was the main event after several other matches Saturday at The Maggie Valley Fairgrounds during a county GOP event billed as a “Spirit of America” celebration, which Savage also emceed once he was done with his fight. The wrestling was clearly the main draw, as crowds cheered, jeered and gasped during each match of the event, which was put on by Wrestling for Christ, a Kings Mountain-based organization that uses the sport as a means to preach the gospel while also raising money for mission trips.
Just prior to his match, Savage, a 56-year-old Jackson County native whose government name is Frank Huguelet, sat down with The Smoky Mountain News. At that time, he was happy and conversational but antsy. The courage to step back into the ring was there, but at some point, the body rebels. This is a truth Huguelet had already accepted.
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“I promise you I’m not doing a moonsault from the top rope,” Huguelet said, adding that it’d been a couple of years since he’d been out of the ring at that point. “I haven’t done any major shows since the ‘90s.”
But even over the last couple of years, especially in light of his match during a 2020 event in Jackson County, people were asking him if was still wrestling. He’d said he’d considered himself retired, and he didn’t want to be that guy who goes out for his last match and can barely move around the ring, but he still wanted to have one final match so he could get a proper sendoff.
Savage wasn’t in the ring long, but he made the time count. Kyle Perrotti photo
The plan was originally to do his last match Oct. 5 of last year, but then Hurricane Helene hit and shut everything down. Finally, Huguelet worked it out to wrestle at the Spirit of America celebration. While it’s common in such a theatrical profession to falsely claim retirement and suffer many dramatic returns late in one’s career, Huguelet promised that wouldn’t be the case for him.
When discussing what compels a man to step back in the ring when he ought to be done, Huguelet posited that it boils down to ego.
“You know, you’re sitting at home, and you’re looking at other people doing what you used to do. They’re getting the cheers, and you’re sitting there going, ‘I could still do that,’” he said. “And then you say, ‘Let’s do it.’ And then you get there and you’re like, ‘Why did I do this?’ It’s all ego. There’s nothing else that would make somebody at my age get a ring.”
An hour later, standing under the hot summer sun surrounded by Maggie Valley’s ancient green mountains, Huguelet was once again — once and for all — Heavy Metal Ric Savage. He waited alongside Austin as they watched their opponents, AWOL — an ominously masked duo in camouflage pants — enter the ring. The ultimate heels, AWOL had some words for the crowd. Knowing most in attendance were ardent conservatives, they knew just how to cast the perfect insults.
Savage’s partner for the match, Shane Austin, looked like he’d lost all hope as he was put in a chokehold by one of the members of AWOL. Kyle Perrotti photo
“If you rednecks would have voted for Kamala like we did, we wouldn’t be in the shape we’re in today, all you Trump supporters,” one of the masked men said.
Savage entered the ring just behind Austin. While many wrestlers that day walked out to alternative Christian music like P.O.D., Savage was preceded by the famous blues-rock lick that begins “Bad to the Bone.” He stepped into the ring as the chorus hit, removing his black cowboy hat and matching jacket with faux bandoliers looping over each shoulder, focused.
A 75-year-old woman in the crowd called out to the ref, insisting he do his job and make sure the member of AWOL who was starting the match in the ring wasn’t hiding a weapon.
“Check him, referee!” she shouted repeatedly.
“Shut up granny,” the masked man responded. “You’re so old you fart dust.”
But enough talking. It was time to grapple. The bell rang, and Austin squared off with his opponent, trading blows for a minute until he tagged Savage, who did much of the same. Savage tagged Austin again, and Austin proceeded to take a licking from both members of AWOL as Savage pleaded with the referee to let him come into the match. Once Austin barely managed to tag Savage, the match was over in a minute.
Fresh off the victory, Savage was ready for one last moment in the ring. He took the microphone.
“This is the last time I’m ever going to wrestle in a professional wrestling show,” he told the crowd. “I started in 1990 in a garage in Waynesville, North Carolina. I had a great career, worked with a lot of amazing people, and I wanted to end it with some of the people I started it with.”
Heavy Metal Ric Savage gets pinned for the last time. Kyle Perrotti photo
His good friends KC Thunder, a former wrestler, and Joe Wheeler, a play-by-play broadcaster, joined him.
“KC and I worked some of these shows together from day one,” Savage said. “Joe has always been there as a manager, and he’s one of the best ring announcers in wrestling, so what I want you guys to do is I want you to help count me out for the last time.”
“Then I’ll officially be a retiree,” he added.
Savage handed the mic off and squared off with KC Thunder, who delivered a sharp blow to Savage’s head and pinned him with the crowd counting along.
Following the match, when asked how it felt to be done-done, Huguelet said all things considered, it was anti-climactic, but he was thankful to have his friends KC and Joe there with him. Not everyone he came up with has made it this far.
“We just lost Sabu a couple weeks ago,” he said. “Probably 30% of the guys I worked with are dead. I think about them.”
But Huguelet, now casting aside the tough-guy Heavy Metal Ric Savage persona, smiled.
“Now that the pressure’s off,” he said with a pause, “I guess I can say I feel great.”
