Ricky Steamboat: The Life Story of the Dragon
by J.D. Dunn
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Old Business:
If it’s not on the same level with the first disc, why this gets the same score as the first disc?
Anyway, good review.
Posted By: The Voice Of The Reason
First, thanks. Second, the score represents the overall set, not each individual disc. Rating each disc as an individual doesn’t make much sense, especially ones that are supposed to provide context for a career. The exception would be individual shows sold together as part of the same set (like ROH’s “Double Feature” or the WWE’s Anthology series).
On with the show…
Growing Up: Ricky admits that he was not born in Hawaii but was, in fact, born in Kenya… wait, no. He was born at Westpoint, NY.. Ricky enjoyed being an army brat. When they moved to Florida, he watched a lot of Championship Wrestling from Florida. He loved Jack Brisco, Don Muraco and Boris Malenko, which makes a lot of sense if you’ve ever seen Jack Brisco’s armdrag. He started training as an amateur wrestler with no aspirations of becoming a pro. He wanted to be a fireman or a police officer.
Training: Ricky’s girlfriend was a flight attendant who just happened to meet Donna Gagne, who was also a flight attendant. He joined as a class of 16 and by the following week, it was down to four. You had to fireman carry a guy up 21 flights. He dropped 40 lbs. in two weeks. Jack Brisco was immediately impressed, but his name was “Richard Blood.” That’s a heelish name, so Eddie Graham said they should bill him as Sam Steamboat’s nephew Ricky. Say, that might go somewhere. Now drink your tea before it gets stone cold.
Traveling: Jim Barnett called Graham and asked to borrow Steamboat. Yeah. I’ll bet he did. Steamboat spent a year as an underneath guy before Ole Anderson made a deal to send him to Mid-Atlantic for the One Man Gang. Ole is either stupid or nice, depending on who you listen to. Everyone thought Ricky would be the babyface version of Ric Flair. Flair handpicked him to feud with. We get footage of Flair calling him out. Wow! You can actually see what’s going on, not like the half a dozen or so comp tapes I have with this angle. Flair rubs Steamer’s face in the cement. A few weeks later, we see Flair holding up a picture of Ricky’s swollen face. Ricky shows up and destroys Flair, ripping his clothes off. We get footage of Flair vs. Steamboat with Andre as the special referee. Tommy Young admits that he used to fight with other referees to get to referee their matches. Ricky didn’t really want to travel as much, though, which is the one thing that held him back.
Mid-Atlantic: Ricky became best friends with Jay Youngblood, almost like brothers. That led to a fantastic team and a rivalry with Sgt. Slaughter and Don Kernodle. It culminated in a huge cage match (and several return matches). And after that, they had the Briscos waiting for them. Ricky and Jay both wanted to go back to singles. They split up, and Ricky was gone to the WWF soon after.
The Dragon: Vince McMahon started his takeover a la Michael Corleone. The WWF became filled with character-based athletes rather than old-style wrestlers. Most of the good, young workers cite Steamboat as their favorite. Evan Bourne admits to taking the armdrag directly from Steamboat, and Steamboat says he got it from Jack Brisco. See. Told you. Ricky really enjoyed his series with Don Muraco. He puts over Muraco’s cardio. Talk turns to Jake Roberts sucker-clotheslining Ricky and DDTing him on the concrete. GASP! That led to a legit head injury and a pissed-off Dragon. Ricky calls Jake one of the top guys to perform against because he knew how and where to do things. The same basic formula was repeated with Randy Savage the following year when Savage smashed his trachea with the ring bell.
WrestleMania III: So it came down to this. The greatest match in the history of WrestleMania to that point. Steamboat and Savage wanted to steal the show because they knew Hogan and Andre were the reason people were there. “This is beyond wrestling ability; this is guts personified right now!” In the end, Ricky was victorious and got the ultimate revenge as he took Savage’s Intercontinental Title that he’d held for over a year. At the after party, Ricky realized it might have been a mistake because everyone came over and congratulated Savage and him, but no one congratulated Hogan. Bad idea! Steamboat asked for time off, but since he was the champion, the WWF told him he’d have to drop it to the Honkytonk Man. He wishes they would have just given him the time off, but he had no problem with dropping it to Honky.
World Champion: George Scott jumps back to WCW and calls up Ricky. Ricky’s time was up in the WWF anyway, so he jumped over to reignite his feud with Flair. Good idea! Ricky was Eddie Gilbert’s surprise partner against Flair and Windham. That led to Flair vs. Steamboat part nine billion in which Steamboat finally won the world title. The trilogy continued with the greatest match in history at Clash VI. A controversial finish meant there had to be yet another greatest match in history in Nashville. Flair finally came out on top. Ricky didn’t care for them immediately jumping into Flair vs. Funk instead of continuing the feud. With nothing to do, Ricky lost his worth to WCW.
Fire-Breathing Dragon: Unable to reach a deal with WCW, he jumped back to the WWF with the goofy fire-breathing gimmick. Yeah, it looked cool, but it was problematic because he had to keep the flammable stuff in his mouth and then wrestle after spitting it out. With the promises of a main-event slot unfulfilled, Ricky jumped back to WCW.
Mentoring: Ricky debuted as Dustin Rhodes’ partner in one of the great tag matches you’ll ever see. Ricky became a locker room leader, taking Dustin and Shane Douglas under his wing. William Regal talks about what a joy it was to work with him. He hit Rick Rude at Rude’s peak, and the result was a great series. That transitioned to Steve Austin. Ricky thought Austin was underappreciated. Ya think?! Richie Steamboat says the only match he can remember is Ricky’s last match. Austin knocked Steamer off the top rope, and Ricky compressed his spine on the landing. Ricky decided that it was time to go while people still remembered him in his prime. Good for him. Ricky started his own gym until his wife wanted a divorce. His kid got into racing, but it was too expensive. Johnny Ace called him up and asked him to come in as an Agent/Producer. We see him talking with Yoshi Tatsu and the NXT rookies, including that strangling bastard Daniel Bryan.
Hall of Fame: They called him up and said he would be inducted into the Hall of Fame, which seems like a no-brainer, but Ricky still gets choked up thinking about it. He admits to being nervous before the speech. Everyone says he was one of the great guys to be inducted. We see him wrestling Chris Jericho at WrestleMania and Backlash. His son Richie is now under WWE contract after going to North Carolina, Kansas City, Japan and Puerto Rico.
Legacy: Everyone admires and loves Steamboat and tries to emulate him. He never had a match as a heel, and no one has a bad thing to say about him.
Special Features
Ricky’s First Car: Ricky bought a ’57 Chevy for $50. Oh, btw, the car only went in reverse. Still. $50. His dad wasn’t too thrilled, though. Ricky looked under the dash and saw that the electrical was all shot to hell. However, he got an offer to sell it for $100, and, even though he was honest, the guy still wanted it. Tidy profit.
Mike Graham Remembers Richard Blood: Mike Graham remembers beating Ricky in high school. Ricky went on to win state the next two years, and six years later, Graham and Blood were teamed up. Graham laughs that Ricky went all the way to Minnesota to train when he could have gone to Tampa.
Ricky Forgets his Name: In his first match, the announcer tells everyone “Dick Blood is unable to make it.” Man, those Levitra commercials are really getting graphic. Ricky was about to correct the announcer before the announcer introduced him as Ricky Steamboat.
Having a Positive Attitude (World Wide Wrestling – 02/16/82). From an interview on World Wide. Ricky talks about the difference between being confident and cocky. He thinks Flair is too cocky and not appreciative of their friendship.
Tuesday Night Titans (04/05/85). TNT, for the uninitiated, was Vince McMahon’s answer to The Tonight Show. Imagine Leno with only wrestlers as guests and Lord Alfred Hayes as a cohost.
Steve Lombardi Remembers Steamboat’s First Match: Lombardi, not yet the Brooklyn Brawler, was tasked with having Steamboat’s first match.
The Body Shop (6/22/85). Jesse’s guest is Ricky Steamboat, of course. He accuses Ricky of cheating with his kung-fu.
Becoming the Dragon… The Three Moments of Truth: Ricky faces the three tests, all of which involve beating up ninjas. No word on whether he faced off with William Zabka. Bizarre moment: Ricky no-sells a kick to the face. Granted, it’s a faceless ninja, but when have you ever seen Ricky no-sell *anything?*
Chris Jericho meets Ricky Steamboat for the first time: Jericho remembers Steamboat coming to a car show and how he asked Steamboat how tall he was. We see the awful picture Jericho got. Haha.
Tuesday Night Titans (9/10/86): Special guest host Gene Okerlund welcomes Ricky and his giant lizard to the show. Ricky talks about the lizard and how it has two eyelids, both of which probably felt like sandbags after this segment.
Update with Gene Okerlund (Superstars – 01/31/87): Gene gives us a much-needed medical update on Ricky after the dastardly attack by Macho Man Randy Savage.
Dragon in the Oven (Superstars – 04/11/87). Ricky Steamboat gloats (as much as a mensch like Ricky can gloat) about winning the IC Title. He also has another announcement – Bonnie is pregnant with a little dragon. Of course, wrestling pregnancies never last, so she was knocked off the apron by Butch Reed and had a miscarriage, but then we found out she was faking it all along to guilt Ricky into giving her the lotto money so she could bribe Dick Slater into telling her who drove the Hummer.
Return from Japan (3/18/89): Ricky returns from Japan where he defended the NWA Title against Tiger Mask II (Mitsuharu Misawa) among others. Nice little match there, although not the classic it might have been with both guys at their heights. Of course, Ric Flair is waiting back in the states and wants a rematch.
William Regal Watches Flair vs. Steamboat: Regal relates of story watching the one-hour Flair vs. Steamboat from Clash VI (and don’t bother correcting me, his words, not mine) while he trained. Hey, I used to do the same thing! Cool. He said he did Hindu squats while he watched a tape of the match and wound up doing 1200 of them. He couldn’t walk for two weeks. He also said it used to drive him mad that Flair and Steamboat had better matches that were never recorded. Oh, William. It’s like my brain is that tree and you’re those little cookie elves.
WCW TV Champion (09/19/92): Ricky shows off his new title and stands by while Teddy Long thanks all the homeys. Ricky tells Steve Austin he knows how to hold on to a title.
Hall of Fame (4/4/09): Ricky’s induction into the HOF.
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