Magazine Archives: Ricky Steamboat Interview – Part 4 (Patreon)

By Jimmy Van, from FightfulMag.com issue 4.

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Ricky could not have been kinder and more generous with his time. This was meant to be a quick interview, but we ended up speaking for four hours over two days. What follows is about as honest and as detailed of an interview with Ricky Steamboat as you’ll ever read.

DECEMBER 8, 2005 – PART FOUR

Jimmy Van: You’re in WWE. You’re doing the Dragon thing. It wasn’t a very long stint in 1991. So, again, what led to you leaving WWE and going back to WCW?

Ricky Steamboat: Well, that period of time when I came back as the Dragon, Vince would tell me, “Well, we’re going to repackage you. Coming back with the dragon wings and blowing the fire.” So, I understood that. But, at the same time, with all the top talent being tied up with their own angles, I didn’t have anybody, really, to work with.

So, I was willing to wait. At the time, some nights, I was doing the opening match or the second match. But, after doing that for about ten months, I just got an attitude to where, “Well, it doesn’t seem like I’m going anywhere...”

Whenever I left, it wasn’t anything like one wrestler got pissed off about something that happens and went storming into the office, you know what I mean? A big argument would break out and be like, “Well, F you,” “Well, F you,” back and forth, back and forth and then, “Well, alright, I quit!” Whenever I left either company, that was never the situation.

JV: You ended up back in WCW, and staying there. You pretty much finished out your in-ring career in WCW.

RS: That was, let’s see —1991 was the Dragon and blowing fire. About nine months of that. Then I went back to WCW and appeared. I think my big appearance was with Dustin. I had this big rubber dragon head and mask on going into the ring. Arn Anderson and Larry Zbyszko.

I went into the ring wearing the thing. They were featuring it on TV when Dustin was doing his interview. “Who’s his mystery partner?” I went down there, and I got in the ring, pulled the hood off. Boy, Anderson really sold it. I’ll never forget to this day; the big wide eyes. He was selling his ass. I got a good pop from the crowd, I remember that. That was in Savannah. Good pop.

JV: You look at some of the names of the guys you worked with. Steve Austin, Scott Steiner, Brian Pillman, and Shane Douglas. Did you sense at the time that these guys were going to go on to become what they became? Especially Steve Austin since he became arguably the biggest draw ever in the business. Did you recognize that those guys had that kind of potential?

RS: I knew, yeah. I knew Shane had it, and Steve had it back in the WCW days when he was “Stunning” Steve Austin. He was tagged up with Brian Pillman and me with Shane Douglas. We had our matches with those guys, and I knew then that this guy was major league.

JV: You ended up working Steve for the U.S. Title as well, in the singles feud?

RS: Right. That was my last series of matches.

JV: I know that you ended up having to retire because of a back injury. How did that injury come about? Was that from a bunch of wear and tear, or was that one spot in one match?

RS: What had happened was, we were both standing on the top rope facing each other, and he does a simple headbutt.I fell back into the ring and did just a regular flat back bump. Standing on the top rope, when he gave me the headbutt, my foot slipped, and instead of landing flat on my back, I came down in almost a sit-up position, right on the point of my tailbone. What had happened, I herniated two discs, and one of them, the bottom one, a piece of disc matter had broken off and made that disc very weak.

I went to the Charlotte Spine Center. I went to Duke University, and I got an MRI done. The doctor said that might have been the straw to break your back, hurt your back, so to speak. But, it might have been just an accumulation of bumps throughout the almost twenty years of working. In that one landing, right on the point of your tailbone, what I ended up doing was a spinal compression and then herniated the two. He said, “You could probably get back into the ring. I’m not going to say it might not be the first body slam or the suplex or something. It might not be the fifth one, or it might not be the twentieth match. But, odds are when you hurt it next time, you’re gonna blow it out, and we’re going to do some serious surgery on your back.”

My mindset was, for probably the last five or six years of my career, where I’d go to work then take some time off, then I’d go to work and take some time off. Then here it is where I really suffered a serious injury, and I was like, “Okay, maybe it’s just time for me to just say so long.”

I went down to the Charlotte Spine Center and did ten weeks of therapy. Most of it was in a pool. I have stretching exercises that I still do to this day because I get what they call “floppy foot.” Do you know what that is?

JV: Floppy foot? No, I’m not sure.

RS: It’s a sciatic nerve you get pinched off at times. Have you seen somebody with a stroke and their right leg doesn’t do very much? So, I get that in either one of my legs.

JV: To this day? You still do?

RS: Yeah. I can be sitting down at a movie theater, and if I’m sitting for a long period of time in the wrong position, it cuts off the nerve. I go to stand up, and I notice I don’t have anything in my right leg and I keep going to my left. Now, if I keep up with my stretching exercises for my lower back, I have less tendency of doing that.

Now, some guys would get some pain down their leg, and it’ll come down the back of their hamstring. But, when it gets at your nerve in your lower back, it goes all the way down to your toes. That’s where the floppy foot statement came about. Mine’s a little bit more than average.

JV: Obviously, it was a decision you made. You never regretted it?

RS: Even now, with WWE and my agent role, I still get in the ring and roll around with the guys. I’m pretty much in there trying to critique some of the younger talent; the babyfaces how to show fire, and I mean a lot of fire in their comebacks. How to sell properly without dying. So, guys go out thinking they’re doing a hell of a job selling, but… after some time, the fans get sick of it. It gets to a point where the fans say, “Why don’t you just go ahead and beat him?”

JV: Some of them might be looking at Steve Lombardi or Mario Mancini in the ring or something.

RS: Yeah. The heel’s been kicking his ass for ten minutes. Geez. Get it over with, get him out of there. This is one of those things I work with talent. Until I actually show them and get in there and demonstrate it to them, and we’re only going at maybe half speed, but I do it just enough where they can see the picture. Then they look at me and say, “Man, I never knew that. I’m out here selling my ass off thinking I’m trying to make it look like the heel look like he’s getting a bunch of heat, but after some time, it’s boring.” I say, “You’re damn right.”

In that capacity, I do that now. Working with some of the talent to put their match together and then getting together with the television truck. What we do as an agent is call the match. Any big stuff that’s coming up, we let the truck know so that they can get the cameras ready and they can get the right angle. Like, “So-and-so’s gonna be flying over the top rope,” and then about five seconds later, here it comes, so they’re ready for it.

JV: I want to talk to you a bit about the differences in wrestling today compared to, say, twenty or thirty years ago. The first thing is kayfabe because in the 1990s WWE started publicly acknowledging that wrestling was entertainment and finishes are pre-determined. Now, you have wrestlers today doing these interviews talking about finishes and putting guys over. The business has completely changed. Do you think that is a change for the better, or do you think part of the art form has been lost because of that?

RS: I don’t think it has changed for the better. I think what we always had with the kayfabe out there was some of the wrestling fans. Like I said earlier, the opening matches... a lot of times in territories, these were guys that had the least amount of experience. But, when you get to the main event — and it’s only because you did an angle on TV — and they came back the following week and added more fight to it. They came back the third week and added some more flavor to it, it hooked you as a fan to tune in to watch. Then you went to a live event to watch it live — and a lot of the guys at that time weren’t really solid. They laid some of that stuff pretty good. The kicks and the forearms, the stuff like that, we were pretty snug with it. You could watch it live and be like, “Oh, man, those guys really hate each other.” I always liked that type of mystique.

What I feel being back in the WWE now, and nobody has come out and said this right out, but us agents, we sit in a production meeting and go over the show. I get the feeling of the direction that if something is going on between a Kurt Angle or a Cena, we want to bring it back to the way we used to do it. That, to me, is uplifting. I’m sure you’ve watched Kurt work. He’s awesome.

JV: Absolutely. No question.

RS: His ground attack. He came to keep you down on the mat, and his ground attack is convincing. I’ve told him, “We were just ten years apart from missing out. I wish I was ten years younger, or I wish that you were back ten years ago.” I’ve told him many times, “I would have loved to have been your babyface.”

JV: Lots of guys have said that. Bret Hart has said many times that he wishes that he could work one more match with Kurt. Going back again to the differences in wrestling, what do you think about the emergence of the Internet now? How do you think that’s impacted the business?

RS: We have a dot com thing that’s on.

JV: For example, WWE tapes Smackdown on Tuesdays, and everybody always knows the results of the show because they’re always all over the Internet. Same thing if on RAW they have a guy backstage who wants to do this big appearance. Maybe The Rock is there or somebody. You always know he’s there before the show airs. Do you think that’s something where WWE just has to go with the flow? Because there are positives to it as well. I mean, big people have kind of embraced wrestling. So, what do you think? Do you think it’s been mostly a negative impact?

RS: Well, the feeling I get from the office is that if they have somebody backstage that’s going to be appearing later in the show, they push real hard to keep that person hidden. They don’t want the news to get out beforehand.

JV: I’ve heard that. When Cena moved to RAW, they kept him in the parking lot or something until it was time to go out.

RS: Yeah, nobody in the talent saw through the whole time that we’re taping it. Then all of a sudden, he’s there. In some cases, if it was somebody special coming in, sometimes that person was walking around backstage in the locker rooms all day long. So, I like the last-minute thing, even us guys don’t know where he’s at.

You know if he’s going to make some sort of appearance, but I’ll be walking around, see Arn and be like, “Hey, have you seen Cena?” “No.” We’re walking along like a bunch of marks.

JV: I think the reason WWE is doing that is because there are wrestlers who tell the wrestling journalists this stuff.

RS: I don’t doubt that. I don’t agree with that. I don’t like that. If we’re trying to keep something special within our business, I say this with a lot of weight. What I mean by that is, if you made it to the WWE, the way the business is today, as opposed to the way it was fifteen years ago —because fifteen years ago you had fifteen different territories you could go to work, correct? —you should be so fortunate and blessed and happy because there aren’t other promotions and territories that you could just go and get work again.

There are a lot of independent groups, but everybody knows what they’re getting paid. At least have some integrity to the fact that you’ve made it to the number one major league company in our industry today and don’t have to call in and say, “Oh, yeah this is something special that’s happening tonight,” to whoever you have with your hookups and your connectionS. I feel very strongly about that. I’d like to know who’s doing it. I’d pull them aside, one-on-one, and give them a piece of my mind about stuff like that.

JV: Well, I’ve always heard that if any guy was found out, he’d be fired by WWE.

RS: Is it worth your career and job? Especially when it is so hard to get in. We’ve got talent fighting to bits, trying to get any kind of a slot in with RAW or Smackdown? Or Velocity or Heat, the other shows. Then these other guys are doing this stuff over the Internet. I don’t like it.

Me being more old school, the breakaway news — getting news beforehand — I don’t think it helps us. I always thought that if people were always left on ‘stay tuned’ and in the mystique of things that it was always better for ratings. You look at all the soap operas over the years. How did they keep going for twenty, twenty-five years? Then that TV series, who shot JR?

JV: Yeah, Dallas.

RS: Dallas, the big mystique thing that went on, you know? If the word got out, sure you’d have people still staying tuned, but there might be a number of them that wouldn’t because, “Hell, I already know who shot him.”

JV: Going back to changes in wrestling, I interviewed Vince Russo about a week ago. Russo told me, to him, the World title or any title is a prop. Why do you think that titles are no longer held in the same regard now than they were when you were in your prime?

RS: There would have been a period where I would have agreed with that statement. It didn’t happen when I was working. It happened somewhere between the time before I came back to the company a year ago, so about a ten-year spread. It might have been thought more of that way. But, the feeling that I get with our two champions — one for Smackdown and one for RAW — it’s definitely not that. We are trying, or they are trying, to make it that if you are the World Champion, that is something big.

It’s something that really means something. It’s not we’re going to put it on you for the sake of putting it on you. Then six months from now, we put it on somebody else, so on and so forth. This is a big deal, and I get that feeling now. I’m behind the scenes with all of us agents. It’s a big deal. You’re going to be the RAW World Champion, or you’re going to be the Smackdown WWE Champion; that’s the cat’s meow. That’s a heavy piece of metal you’ve got to deal with going through security in your bag.

JV: Do you think that there are too many titles? Or maybe too many title changes now? Because it’s rare to see a guy hold a title for a year, whereas it used to be all the time.

RS: Well, how long have Cena and Batista now had it?

JV: They’ve both had it for a while. I think Batista won it maybe six months ago from Triple H. I think Cena got it at WrestleMania from JBL. So, he’s had it for a while, too. But before then, you’d see Triple H would have it for a couple of months. One of the big things people talk about is that Triple H was a big fan of Ric Flair. Flair had sixteen title wins, and Triple H is going to get to seventeen. That’s one of the big things he’ll always joke about. So, the only way to get there is to win the title and lose it five or six times. But, you do think it’s different now? Do you think the titles are starting to mean more?

RS: I get that feeling. I like that because then it’s always been that way, where if you had a champion and he’s the champion for a while, he’s gone through several guys, and he keeps coming home with the gold, then eventually... they switch it, and it’ll have a big impact. It’ll really mean something.

JV: Something else I want to talk about is WWE’s drug policy. This is something they’re going to be implementing, and it’s something that didn’t exist during your prime. Number one, do you think WWE is serious about the policy?

RS: They are serious. I know they are.

JV: What do you think if six months from now, the wrestlers start flattening out and they lose their definition? Chris Masters, his gimmick is basically his body. Do you think WWE, in that case, might become less strict about it? Also, what if a guy like Batista were to be found with a banned substance? Do you think WWE would treat him with kid gloves because he’s Batista, or do you think they would suspend or fine him like he was anybody else?

RS: Well, I don’t know because they haven’t come out with a final draft of what’s going to happen if you get caught or what kind of a drug — uppers or downers, smoking crack or pot. They haven’t brought any of that out. All that I know is what we’ve been told, and that is there will be a punishment.

JV: Okay, so you think that they’ll stick with that no matter who the performer is?

RS: I do truly believe it.

JV: Another issue I want to talk to you about, over the last ten years or so, it seems that the mortality rate has become an issue in wrestling. There’s been a lot of people you knew — Brian Pillman, Rick Rude, Davey Boy Smith, Miss Elizabeth, Kerry von Erich, and most recently Eddie Guerrero — and Phil Mushnick, I’m sure you’ve heard of him. He’s a columnist with the New York Post, and he tends to point the finger at Mr. McMahon. Then you’ve got some wrestlers like Andrew Martin [Test]. He has written stuff on his website saying he thinks it’s the road schedule and guys taking bumps five days a week, fifty-two weeks a year, and it’s making them take sleeping pills and painkillers. Do you think the wrestling lifestyle should be held accountable for this?

RS: It’s not Vince McMahon. It’s not the wrestling lifestyle. What about back in the day, and this is early in my career, in the mid-1970s when we had the veterans of the business — Killer Kowalski, Bruno Sammartino, Harley Race, Jack Brisco, Dory Funk, the Funks — were any of those guys on steroids?

Were all those guys drugged up? Or coked up? No. Their road working schedule was just as much as ours. In my prime, I was doing three hundred shows a year. They were doing it the same way — two hundred and fifty, three hundred shows a year — for twenty or twenty-five, thirty years of the wrestler’s career. Not Vince McMahon.

It’s a generational thing. It’s a generation of guys who, from the mid-70s on up to the mid-90s, that twenty-year run and then carries through even today. Back in Dory Funk’s days, they didn’t have popping pills and all that stuff. At least that’s the way I understand it, and that’s the way I was told. It’s sometimes just stupid, dumb guys.

JV: I want to ask you one more question about wrestling today compared to the old days. Basically, in the old days, it seemed like promoters, a lot of them had the reputation of being cheap and short-changing the talent. Then Eric Bischoff introduced guaranteed contracts. WWE picked up on that and started offering downside guarantees. It seems now that they’re starting to go back to the way things used to be. I’ve talked to some guys after they’re released, and they claim that they were lowballed on new contracts by WWE and had to have their deals restructured. WWE claims that houses are down and ratings are down, and they’re kind of crying poverty. At the same time, Mr. McMahon is making forty million a quarter on stock dividends. So, do you think that WWE wrestlers are in a bad spot or do you think they have it better than they’re leading on?

RS: You remember when WCW started with guaranteed contracts, and then it was guys that said, “Oh, my ankle hurts. I can’t appear on the show.” Or, “I hurt my shoulder, I can’t appear on the show tonight. My check will still be in the mail.” I truly feel one of the biggest reasons for WCW’s fall down was because of the boys. A lot of the main event house shows had no shows.

From what I was told... towards the end, every single show — they were changing main events because whatever was advertised — those guys weren’t appearing. So, here’s the guarantee. They were sitting at home, but they knew they were getting their guaranteed paycheck. Before, whenever we worked, and that was when I was with WWE in the mid-80s, Randy Savage and I worked a house show, we got paid for that house show. If you didn’t work, then you didn’t get paid. I don’t mind it all with the guys having the downside guarantee they would get work, X-amount depending on how much they draw.

Even having the downside guarantee was better than what we had. We didn’t have a downside guarantee. So, some of these guys, and the agents, we’re all on the same page about this. There’s a lot of guys that don’t have that many talents, but they’re making a ton of money. If it was back in the day, and you didn’t have that much talent, you were doing the first or second or third match on the wrestling card.

I’ve seen some talent since I’ve been back with the company for a year. I’ve seen some so-so talent. They knew they had to step up, and now I see them work, and here it is a year later, and they have really stepped up.

JV: Do you think that WWE is too focused on cosmetic appearance and size? You’ve seen guys like Charlie Haas, who is a great in-ring wrestler, get released and a guy like — and I don’t want to knock him — but Gene Snitsky or Tyson Tomko, who are not great wrestlers. Do you think that size and cosmetic appearance are too important in WWE?

RS: That premise has always been a factor with the WWE. It’s always been. But, you know, in defense of Gene and Tomko, I think they’ve come along this past year. Because when I came on board about a year ago, Tomko was mostly doing bodyguard stuff, right? Gene had just been brought up from OVW, one of the developmentals. Basically, the two guys have only been steadily working a year. They have stepped up. I remember my first year in the business, and I had two hundred and fifty matches under my belt. I have seen some of my early stuff, and then I’ve watched my matches when I was ten years into the business. What a difference.

JV: Do you think they’re being called up too soon? If they’re being called up green, do you think that’s too soon?

RS: Well, trying to use the example of back in the day, the answer would have been yes. The bar has been lowered so much, but considering where the bar level is at now, they’re gonna be considered pretty damn good.

JV: Let’s talk about your book. It’s called the Professional Wrestler’s Instructional and Workout Guide.I know that you did it in conjunction with Harley Race, Les Thatcher, and Alex Marvez. Did you ever think twenty years ago that you’d be involved with putting a book together that kind of opens up the business, shows how moves are done and how to work with your opponent?

RS: No, because twenty years ago there was definitely some serious kayfabe.

JV: How’d the idea come about for this?

RS: I believe it’s through Les; he got the ball rolling. He and Harley are very tight. I’m good friends with both, and they brought me into the equation. I’m not sure there’s a lot of wrestling fans who know Harley. You have to go back a few years if you remember watching him, especially in his heyday. Les is known within our wrestling business, so some of the wrestling fans can recall him. But, he did a lot with broadcasting. I’m almost getting to the point now where, because I’ve been out of it for eleven years, to where fans are like, “Oh, yeah, I know Ricky Steamboat.” Ninety percent of your hardcore fans do remember me.

But, this past generation or two, they go and watch. Their dad will come up to me, and he’ll have his eight-year-old with them and say, “Hey, man.” The eight-year-old kid is a John Cena fan. He’ll go, “Hey, man. This is Ricky Steamboat.” The kid will look at me and me and go, “Well, okay.”