Magazine Archives: Ricky Steamboat Interview, Part 1

By Jimmy Van (originally in issue 1 of FightfulMag.com)

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.

Jimmy Van: You were always billed as being from Honolulu, but you were actually born in West Point, New York.

Ricky Steamboat: That is true.

JV: You’re half Japanese. Do you know the language at all?

RS: Skoshi... that means a little bit.

JV: Your junior college guidance counsellor sort of led you to pro wrestling?

RS: Yes, I had that decision made because of the fact that I was going to get transferred to Tampa University and finish out, and I actually wanted to be a football and wrestling coach. At that time, which was about 1973, he was telling me that there was an abundance of coaches at the junior high and high school level throughout the state of Florida. A lot of northern coaches were coming to Florida and finishing out their teaching and retiring down there. There was a pretty long waiting list, even for someone like me that got right out of college.

JV: You ended up going into the AWA (American Wrestling Association) wrestling camp? Khosrow Vaziri (Iron Sheik) was one of the trainers, and a couple of the guys in the camp with you were Scott “Hog” Irwin and Buck Zumhofe.

RS: Right, and Jan Nelson.

JV: Tell us about the AWA camp. Ric Flair has said that when he went through, he actually quit twice.

RS: Flair’s camp, along with Greg Gagne, and Jim Brunzell, Kenny Patera, and The Iron Sheikwent through that camp I believe. First day of camp we had about 16 guys show up and at the end of two weeks, there were four of us left, the three names that you had mentioned and myself. It was the hardest thing that I ever went through in my life.

I knew that I was going to go to Minnesota for about six months prior to going and I trained really hard in Florida. I was weight training every other day and also doing cardio training. But even with all that, going up there as fit as I was, I went up there probably weighing in the neighborhood of 240 pounds and about 12 weeks later I was like 202. I dropped like 40 pounds.

JV: Sheik was telling you guys to be loose with the holds and that helped you figure things out?

RS: Well, he would try to teach us to go from… like chain wrestling, go from one move to another move to another move. And if you’re stiff and locked up, he said, just be loose so I can show you how to move the arm and move the leg and you can continue the rhythm. That is the way we were taught going over our drills over and over. Then we got a little suspicious.

After about six or eight weeks of it, we thought, how do you go from one hold to another when a guy really has it locked in on you real tight? That discussion never came about. We were huddled up together and sometimes we’d talk if Khosrow was 15 minutes late or if he went to the bathroom or something like that. “You know... we haven’t been shown anything that hurts yet.” Headlocks and top wrist locks and hammerlocks, all this kind of stuff you know? Even the figure four.

JV: You started in the AWA before you were sent out to the territories. You were known as Dick Blood then. What was it like working under Verne Gagne?

RS: He was okay. There was just one match, one moment when he really got pissed at me. We were wrestling in Winnipeg, Canada, and I was wrestling against “Mad Dog” Vachon. Mad Dog and Verne were coming back to Winnipeg to wrestle for Verne’s championship. I was just going to go in and have a match that lasted five or six minutes with Mad Dog. Well, that particular match was a 20-minute time limit. It was like the first month that I was in the business, so he was a heel... I just kept listening and doing what he wanted me to do.

“Okay kid, fight back,” then he’d cut me off… We went 19 and some odd minutes. Getting back to the locker room, Verne came into the locker room and there was a hallway. One side of the locker room were the babyfaces, the other side of the locker room were the heels. Verne came in, and he was just screaming, “What the hell do you think you’re doing out there? I told you, you only needed to go five or six minutes.”

From across the hallway, you could hear Mad Dog, “Verne Gagne! If you wanna yell at somebody, you come over here and yell at me. That kid was doing everything that I told him to do.” Other than that, Verne would come down and try to teach. He wasn’t a yelling in-your-face type of guy. He was pretty cordial.

JV: WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) now has a dress code policy. Back in the day, Verne always wanted guys to wear slacks and sport coats. It’s almost like he had a dress code policy 30 years before WWE did?

RS: Yeah, I mean most of the guys would come to the building, Larry “The Axe” Hennig, Baron von Raschke, Billy Robinson, Mad Dog, all the guys would be wearing sport coats, turtlenecks and slacks. Looking very professional. We all understand… that this is the number one wrestling company in the world… Here in the States... you can’t get any higher than where we’re at. So, dress appropriately.

JV: Your first territory after the AWA was Florida with Eddie Graham. Going back to Flair’s book, he talked about the contracts that Verne would make you sign giving 10% of your gross when you went somewhere else. Was that a problem with you, and how long did it last for?

RS: No, I paid it. When I went to Florida, I paid 10% of my gross down there. I was only in Florida for maybe four or five months, then went to Atlanta and paid my 10% there. Ole Anderson was the booker in Atlanta at that time. This was getting in around 1976. After I’d been there over a year, he [Anderson] said to me, “Ricky, it’s time to move on.” I said, “Well, I’m one of Verne’s boys.” “Oh, you’re under contract with Verne, and give him a kick-back? Well, you need to call Verne and tell him that you’ve been here for over a year, but it’s time for you to move on.”

I called Verne up, and then he called me back, and he says, “Okay I’ve got a spot for you, I’d like for you to go to Vancouver, British Columbia.” At that time in Atlanta, I had a good friend of mine, Dean Ho, who wrestled with Tony Gareain the WWF (World Wrestling Federation) at the time. He had a referee friend in Vancouver, and he called him up and asked how business up there. The referee said the business was terrible, guys are only making $20-$25 a night… So, I called back Verne and told him the situation, and if there was another territory that he could send me, I would truly appreciate it. This was the second time that he was really upset with me, you know.

I don’t want to drive 3000 miles just to go work five or six days a week for $25 to $35 a night. He said, “Book yourself then, and see how far you get in the business.” So, I went back to Ole with this and I told him the whole story about what Vancouver’s doing, and Verne getting mad. A week or so later he called me up and said, “You’re going to Charlotte, to Crockett Promotions up there.” I went there, and six months later I was doing an angle with Flair.

JV: So, Ole is the one that got you into Mid-Atlantic?

RS: Yeah, that was 1977. March of ‘77 and it was about two years later… Believe it or not, we walked into one show, it was either 1978 or ‘79, and there in the locker room was Verne. He came up to me and said, “We need to talk.” So, we went into a separate room and he said, “I understand you’ve been doing pretty well here.”

It was around that time that Youngblood and I were tagged up and doing very well as a tag team. And he says, “You’re making main event money now… You owe me 10% for the last two and a half years.” My response back to him was, “Verne, if you recall our conversation, your last words to me were for me to book myself and see if I can make it in the business.” The last line I said to him was, “If you want to further this anymore, call Jim Crockett Promotions and speak to the office attorney, and then that’s where we will take it from there.” And that was the very last time I saw or heard from Verne Gagne.

JV: You changed your name to Ricky Steamboat, and you got the name from Sam Steamboat.

RS: No.

JV: It wasn’t from Sam Steamboat?

RS: The Steamboat name did obviously derive from Sam. Eddie Graham gave me the name. I walked into the office and Eddie looked at me. Verne had sent a photo with Dick Bloodwritten across it. Eddie said it was a great name, but it was a heel name and that I was a babyface. Eddie told me about Sam Steamboat and said they would bill me as Ricky Steamboat, Sam’s nephew from Hawaii.

I said, “Mr. Graham, you can call me anything you want, I’m just happy to have a job.” It wasn’t even two months later that I’m working a main event with Mike Graham and Steve Keirn doing a six-man tag against the Hollywood Blondesand [Oliver] Humperdinkas their manager. It wasn’t because of my work; it was only because of Sam Steamboat.

During my first show, the ring announcer said Dick Blood wouldn’t be able to make it due to flight problems. I had forgotten about the new name, so I approached the announcer to tell him I was present. The announcer tried to shoo me away before introducing Dick Blood’s replacement: Ricky Steamboat.

JV: You were known for incorporating martial arts techniques into your matches. Dean Ho was your influence?

RS: He was very, very instrumental in showing me how to do it, and when to do it and how to do it in the fashion of a work, and stuff like that. If it wasn’t for Dean, I don’t know if I would have ever done it.

JV: The move that you did that was my favorite was the deep arm drag. Where did that come from?

RS: Jack Briscowas doing that move in the late ‘60s and the ‘70s and I was watching him do it on Florida Championship Wrestling. I started doing it but once again, credit goes to another individual.

JV: In Mid-Atlantic, you feuded with Ric Flair, and that was the first feud that really made you take off. You were the new guy coming in, he put you over right away. The storyline was perfect with Flair; the womanizer who was threatened by this good-looking newcomer. Describe that first time working with Flair?

RS: He was snug. His punches and kicks and chops and stuff like that. He was living up to the image, obviously, you have to realize what era of wrestling that was. That was an era in our business in which kayfabe was dominant. You know, make your punches look good, or stick ‘em in, work tight, work snug.

Eddie Graham and Boris Malenko, Dean Malenko’sfather. They would have these Russian Chain Matches and they’d be bleeding and wrapping the chain around their hands, around their fists, and hitting each other in the head with them. And we would be sitting there saying, “Man, there’s nothing fake about that, he’s really hitting him,” and so with that in mind, you could see a little difference in workmanship.

There would be times in which he [Flair] would be sitting down in a restaurant eating and I would walk in and see him and turn around and walk right back out. Or if we happened to be in a public place passing each other. We would uphold the integrity of the business.

JV: What’s amazing about that is that you were training for those bodybuilding competitions, meanwhile you were going 60-minutes every night with Ric Flair. You couldn’t have been consuming too many calories?

RS: Very low carb, even during that time. And most of the time I was taking any kind of complex carbohydrate it was probably an hour or two before the show.

JV: You were big on fruit?

RS: I was really big on fruit, and I would eat that maybe 15 minutes before going into the ring, a couple apples or oranges or pears. Maybe two hours before the match, I’d probably eat half of a baked potato. That was my complex carbs… It would give me just enough to make it. There were times in which during a long match, a 60-minute match with [Flair] I would get lightheaded and feel weak, and he would have to slap a hold on me until I could gather myself up again.

That was probably a real joy in my life with Ric for 60 minutes. I’ll never forget the time that after I’d established myself with Flair as a babyface that Harley Raceat the time was the World Champion and he came into our territory. Usually, the NWA (National Wrestling Alliance) Champion at that time was in and out of territories, working for like a week or two and then moving onto another.

I was working with Harley Race for the very first time in Raleigh, North Carolina. The booker, George Scott, was there and just before I was going on he said, “You’re going an hour through.” And I said, “Wow, really?” He said, “Yes, you’re going an hour through with the Champ.” I’d already had some hour matches with Flair at this time, but this was Harley Race. This was the World Champion.

He said, “Don’t worry, the old-timer will take care of you.” So, I just went out there and listened, we went through the hour, had a good match. It wasn’t until about ten months… later that he swung back through the Carolinas again and sure enough, return match; Ricky Steamboat and Harley Race. The booker said, “We can’t beat Harley Race of course, but also we don’t wanna beat you.” Most of the time, heels called the match... I had worked with Harley in that hour broadway a year before, but just as we locked up, he goes, “Kid, you call this match.”

JV: That’s like a major sign of respect.

RS: It was. He had me call the whole match. Sitting in the locker room, I remembered some of the trademark Harley Race stuff that he liked to do. But I never knew that... just as we locked up, he’d say, “Kid, you call this one.” I got weak at the legs for a moment.

JV: But you got through it fine.

RS: Got through it fine, gave me a hell of a comeback in the last five minutes of the hour broadway… After the match, I’m sitting in the locker room. We’re the last match of course and I’m by myself. Harley is across on the other side of the building in the heel locker room. The referee came over to tell me while I was in the shower, Tommy Young said, “Hey, Champ says thank you very much, you called a good match.” I thought, wow.

JV: Probably the best compliment you could have had.

RS: Knowing the condition of our business at that time, knowing that kayfabe was so prominent. Respect for your senior workers in the business was always... yes sir, no sir, type of thing. The champ comes walking in, you immediately stand up, walk over and shake his hand. It was that type of deal going on. If there wasn’t a chair, and he walked in you would offer him yours… So, when I heard that from Tommy Young... that was a great compliment.

JV: You mentioned earlier Jay Youngblood. Aside from the feud with Flair, you were probably the best well known at that time for working with Youngblood. You guys were the tag champs for four years. Would you say that he was your best tag partner or your favorite?

RS: Both.

JV: He was known for having substance abuse issues. His problem sort of became yours in that you had to deal with them. What was it like at that time?

RS: I’m not painting myself as an angel... around 1981, [everyone] was doing drugs... There was probably a period of time in my life of about six to eight months where I don’t remember getting any sleep. I saw myself on TV wrestling and I actually looked at myself physically. It was an awakening.  I said, “Oh my God, do I look like that?” I was dropping weight, I got away from training, just partying all the time.

That was an awakening. I just went cold turkey with it. Although, he [Jay] continued. And it became a big problem between him and I. Going down the road, he would continue doing drugs. That last year we were together, I tried to be his big brother. I tried to tell him, “Hey, you’ve gotta stop this. It’s a dead-end for you.” Finally, after a year, I went into Crockett Promotions. I said, “Look, I don’t wanna be tagging anymore.”

It wasn’t too long after that that Youngblood really fell off. He and I didn’t speak very much to each other. I remember when I got life insurance for myself and for my family, he had a little girl, Rica, and was married. So, my insurance guy got him life insurance. When I heard he had passed away, I called my insurance man. He said that about six months prior to Jay passing, he’d stopped paying his premiums, and it got canceled out. He left a wife and a beautiful baby girl, and they had nothing.

To be continued...