WWE Hall of Famer Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat recently sat down with The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast to discuss his matches with Ric Flair and his memories of Dusty Rhodes. Down below are the highlights.
On his memories of Dusty Rhodes:
I have mixed memories with Dusty. Part of it being business when I was actively wrestling and he was actively wrestling and then later on when we were both coaching and teaching at the WWE school for the up and coming wrestlers. Understanding the business part of it, he was doing a job he had to do and at the time that it was in the Carolinas back in 1984. When you are the booker or the match maker and you are also still actively wrestling, most of the guys that were bookers around most of the country at that time were no longer actively wrestling and not penciling themselves into matches. I didn’t come to realize this until a couple of months ago. I was in the Carolinas and Dusty was the new booker and Dusty was wrestling as a baby-face. The way he was writing for me being one of the top baby-faces in the Carolinas and having a ton of matches against Ric Flair and it just being smart business, he was using me in a way that with him coming in whoever I couldn’t beat he would beat. The fans would say well “Ricky couldn’t beat him”, but “Dusty could beat him” so Dusty was so much better and it sort of left a bad taste in my mouth and that’s another reason why I left the Carolinas for the WWF.
On his matches with Ric Flair:
We had wrestled each other so many times in Charlotte at the Coliseum. George Scott who was the booker at the time said I don’t care how you do it but you are going to put Flair over tonight. We’ve had so many one hour Broadways that we had to make it something hot. Going sixty minutes all the time, twenty-five or thirty minutes would really shock these people. But we ended up going fifty-five minutes plus and the fans were thinking we were going to go with a draw again. We had one minute left in the match before it was going to become a draw and here comes (Steamboat) making his comeback, I’m pinning Flair over and over again, with fifth-teen seconds left and Flair in the corner I charge him, he lifts my feet up and puts his feet on the second rope in the corner and the ref counts three as the announcer is counting 5,4,3..two seconds left and Flair wins by cheating with his feet on the ropes. There was a lull in the building with the fans looking at us and then they just erupted and started throwing stuff at Flair and Flair looked at me and said “we got them tonight” and rolled out of the ring.
You can listen to the entire interview down below:
