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Savage v. Steamboat: The Beginning


Ricky Steamboat vs. Randy Savage-IC title by Stinger1981

By request this morning.  Not only a great match on free TV in 1986, but you may be familiar with the angle that it sets up.  If the Paul Orndorff turn made me a fan, this was what made me a fanatic.

Comments

  1. I can't remember the exact match or angle that made me a fan. It's a case of I started watching wrestling with my dad so young that it's kind of ingrained in me so to speak. My dad would take me to a video store and he'd buy me WWF VHS tapes. So it was the early WrestleMania's that really turned me into a fan. Two events that are stuck in my early memory are the WrestleMania IV tournament and Hogan vs. Savage the very next year.


    It's interesting that my dad is the one who got me started watching Wrestling because he's pretty much the only reason I watch Raw live now. He watches it too and he'll call me up and we'll talk about it every week. Hell he kept me up to date on storylines for a while.


    And this has nothing really to do with this post or match. But it is classic.


    I am wondering how would one go about watching WWF from the mid 80's to early 90's. If you wanted to see all the angles develop in a pre Monday Night Raw-monthly PPV format what shows would be the important ones to get? Obviously the Big 5 PPV's. But on a week to week basis is it mainly Superstars that advanced angles back then?

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  2. I remember this way better than anything on Raw in the past 11 years or so. I had just started watching, and didn't really think Steamboat was that big of a deal before this. I was shocked at the time by Savage's brutality, and it obviously set up a huge revenge match. Between this and the Hogan-Andre angle around the same time, I was hooked for life (for better or worse).

    Also, love how Jesse was saying it was such a big deal to see this I-C title defense on television. If you only knew what the future held, Body...

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  3. The important angles usually happened at Saturday Night's Main Event.

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  4. Ricky Steamboat is beautiful. 8 P

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  5. Is that the first signs of a heel turn for Danny Davis?

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  6. I love this match but I really wish I knew why WWE seems unable or unwilling to put it on DVD, especially considering its historical significance in setting up the legendary Wrestlemania III match that's on at least six different DVD sets. They've had plenty of opportunity to do so, and yet they never do. Weird.

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  7. Men are not objects!

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  8. According to WWE.com, they are!

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  9. Then it HAS to be true!

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  10. I think Davis was the ref when Savage beat Santana for the IC title under questionable circumstances.

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  11. didn't Danny Davis' heel turn start with Santana's loss to Savage? I vaguely remember that when they recapped all of Davis' 'transgressions', they included a clip from that match, which was a year prior.

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  12. maybe I am not remembering correctly, but wasn't this a rematch? for whatever reason, I seem to remember that this was their second match (the first match being a week or so prior).

    I think they did that a few times with Savage, where they had the initial match with a challenger, then a second (for example, Billy Jack Haynes, of all people, got two matches with Savage)

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  13. My guess is two things:
    1) Ventura commentary that is on something that is unreleased thus far, so they would have to pay Jesse.

    2) They cannot overdub the Alan Parsons Project song without losing something key during that entrance.

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  14. The fact that Davis had officiated the Santana/Savage title match was just a happy coincidence that they later retconned to say Davis cost Tito the match when really, Davis was just being as inept as any referee during that period.

    Davis's heel turn was a bit of a slow burn at first. He seemed to favor
    certain heel wrestlers but you could argue that the calls he made were justified. Case in point: during a match with Jake the Snake Vs. Dick Slater, Dick managed to get a pinfall on Jake but Jake put his foot on the rope immediately afterwards. Davis looked up from his count, saw the foot on the ropes and ordered the match to continue. Dick Slater got enraged and tossed Davis across the ring and Davis, understandably, disqualified him on the spot.

    Where it starts getting murkier is during the Orndorff/Hogan SNME Cage match, where both men hit the floor at the same time. Referee Joey Marella said Hogan won while Davis went with Orndorff. Now either call could have been justified but when Marella argued with Davis, Davis violently shoved him to the floor. Not to mention that, according to Vince anyway, Davis was not supposed to be out there to begin with and Joey Marella was the assigned official for the cage match.


    It wasn't until he cost the Bulldogs their tag titles that there was no doubt of his crooked intentions anymore.

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  15. If you can pick up a set of Superstars and the Saturday Night's Main Events for a particular year, you're pretty well set. Primetime is awesome due to the late 80's pairing of Monsoon/Heenan, but I find it easier to sit through old Superstars episodes. Monsoon and Heenan are great, of course, but the two hour format drags a bit compared to Superstars, where you're getting all the big angles in an hour format that flies by. A few years ago, I went through 1987 watching Superstars, SNME and the ppvs and it was great.

    I started watching similarly to the way you did, by renting at mom and pop shops. We used to have a shop that ran a deal where you could get 5 vhs tapes for 5 bucks. Friday night, we'd usually go pick up five movies and I'd get 2 or 3 wrestling tapes and watch them over the weekend. It was the best.

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  16. Upvoted for awesome Danny Davis knowledge.

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  17. Vince is saying some really gay stuff two minutes in.

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  18. Thank you Jesse Ventura for making worked wrestling matches seem like the biggest of sporting events.

    Giving us the measurements, talking strategy, giving us insight into the psychology behind wrestlers' strategy, and putting over the prestige of the titles--Jess was awesome.

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  19. I forgot how fantastic this was.

    In regards to the moment that made me a fan, mine is a little out there. My dad ordered wrestlemania 2, which was my first exposure to the sport. I was hooked when George Wells was started foaming at the mouth from Damien being wrapped around him. I vividly remember asking my dad if he was ok. So George Wells, if you're out there somewhere, take solace in that you affected one wrestling fan for life.

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  20. Yeah Superstars was really the only necessary show to catch up on 95% of the angles each week. It's amazing how efficient wrestling used to be -- one hour a week!

    Challenge was sort of the vanilla to Superstars chocolate. Different squashes, different interviews, different announcing but more or less the same angles, just the "other side of the coin" so to speak, but there did tend to be less big events that actually happened on the show, especially in the early 1990s, so Superstars was the "A" show while Challenge was like the "A-" show.

    The strategy back then is interesting to observe. Clearly Superstars was aimed at kids, airing just after cartoons in most markets. One freaky thing was that in some markets Challenge would air on a Saturday and Superstars on a Sunday, while in other markets it would be reversed. A few would air them both on Saturdays.

    PTW was definitely aimed at adults -- it aired on cable in prime time from 9 to 11pm in either Monday or Tuesday nights and you'd get a smattering of the Superstars and Challenge matches from the weekend, typically with redubbed commentary, matches from MSG and Canadian house shows, plus often a feature match that was typically a dark match from a TV taping. I was rarely allowed to stay up to watch it, but I actually preferred it to Superstars at the time (early 90s) because you got all the highlights plus some decent non squash matches too.

    Then you had All American on USA which was more or less a quick recap of Superstars and Challenge.

    If you *really* lived out in the sticks in the US, there was Wrestling Spotlight on UHF in syndication if you couldn't get VHF stations. That show was another magazine style recap show, but was bizarre in that Sean Mooney hosted it but often as his evil alter ego "Ian" Mooney. Miss Elizabeth would host too on occasion, it was an odd show. I remember it sort of exposed wrestling a bit for me, because it aired on Friday at 4pm here and would recap Superstars angles that aired at 11am on Saturday here. It blew my mind as a young kid, that's for sure.

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  21. He was so good. Making everything seem important and importance of each match i.e. moving up the rankings, title shots, more money at the pay windahh.

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  22. He really was remarkable. Why WWE doesn't tell their announcers to study 100 hours of Jesse Ventura is beyond me.

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  23. Yeah that Danny Davis retcon was done very, very cleverly. I hear fans say all the time that they remember him being a heel ref in the Savage/Santana match, when they certainly invented it after the fact.

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  24. I think "Superstars" is fine, it's "Superstars of Wrestling" that is the issue.

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  25. Because Jesse wasn't telling stories.

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  26. JBL has been doing a good job, though he's no Jesse.



    Vince's interminable need to micro-manage the commentary is part of the problem.

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  27. It's crazy to me, I just can't imagine how anybody would not look at his commentary and say THIS is exactly what we should be doing. It's a million more times interesting than commentary since.

    It's funny -- commentary is the one area of the business that I don't think was rejuvenated in the later 1990s along with the rest of the industry. Joey Styles was good in his atmopshere and JR and Jerry Lawler for a time were probably the best for that period, but it's not really saying much. Late 1990s Jim Ross is more catchphrases than sharp storytelling.

    The last great commentary team was really Monsoon/Heenan IMO, but there were a ton of great teams in the same era and prior to that, plus a lot of guys great with anybody (Solie, even Piper was a lot of fun).

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  28. Where did you live when you ordered WrestleMania 2?

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  29. Schivonie/Jesse were pretty decent too.

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  30. Yeah, they were a very solid team in 1989/1990 and pretty good in 1993/1994 too. Even Vince/Jessie was a good team. In WCW, Ross/Ventura were pretty good in 1992, although I don't think they ever had the same kind of chemistry together that each had with Schiavone.

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  31. About 20 minutes outside of Buffalo. Not sure what the cable provider was.

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  32. This was HUUUGE when I was 6...
    Hogan/Orndorff, Savage/Steamboat, Piper/Adonis, Harts/Bulldogs.. 1986 was a great year..
    and of course, The Machines~!

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  33. Championship Wrestling was the "A" show and when that ended in the fall of 1986, it became Superstars. All-Star Wrestling was alwats the "B" show and that was replaced with Challenge.

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  34. Because they have to spend hundreds of hours studying Vince's balls.

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  35. Hear those screams? That isn't "Wheeeee this is fun! I know Cena is about to save the day!"


    This is, "FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS HOLY GET THAT MAN SOME HELP!!!! HE'S GONNA DIE!!!!!!"

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  36. Back then probably TCI.

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  37. As far as angles that made us fans of wrestling, I'd have to go with this one...
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYmlr88OANQ

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  38. Yeah, putting this with Piper/Adonis as the feuds that really drew me in.

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  39. I honestly can't remember what made me like wrestling as a kid.


    I do remember the ending of the 1997 Royal Rumble making me mad though (I was 13 and a huge mark for Bret), and didn't start watching again until Royal Rumble 2000 and the Cactus Jack/Triple H street fight brought me right back in.


    Since then, I've been watching every single episode of Raw in between those two events to see everything I missed. Besides the obvious stuff that WWE shows ad naseum.

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  40. This image is what lured me to wrestling and the match turned me into a super fan.

    http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101101134645/prowrestling/images/2/24/WrestleManiaVI_Poster.jpg

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  41. JBL was amazing during his time on Smackdown. obviously rooting for the heels but still putting over the faces as dangerous competition (compare that to Cole after his heel turn where he pretty much buried all the faces on commentary).


    that's the same with Ventura: he would rip on someone Tito Santana's character but never really question his abilities.

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  42. btw: in a way... THAT'S great storytelling

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  43. Watch the Jesse shoot interview.


    Solid stuff.

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  44. Jesse in the shoot said he hated working with JR

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  45. JBL MADE Londrick... but i also loved the fact that he would BURY MVP every chance he got.

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  46. And, in case you were wondering if the angle got over, check this out... The crowd goes nuclear for a hip toss 2 minutes into the match,

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NOXhqUhXW_s

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  47. I will always contend that the throat-crushing angle should have been recycled against The Rock, especially in either the 2000 Benoit feud or his 2001 Jericho feud. Benoit as the silent killer shutting up the People's voice with a Crossface around the neck. Or Jericho as the mouthy heel shutting up his competition so he can rant unopposed. People LOVE hearing the Rock speak, so his return promo could have been big.

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  48. Schiavone/Tenay always drove me batshit crazy and actually detracted from WCW even when interesting shit was happening on their shows. Tenay's voice is like nails on the proverbial blackboard

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  49. As a young mark, this match was unparalleled in the "anyone can win" department.

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  50. That shoot was great. My favorite part was when the interviewer asked him about his favorite "rib" and Jesse had no fucking clue what he was talking about and gave him the greatest look that obviously scared the shit out of the interviewer.
    But yeah, that was a really good shoot interview. I saw the timeline of 1991 WCW with Barry Windham and that wasnt much. Barry appeared to be hungover as shit and the interviewer basically had to force him to answer questions.

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  51. Such thing exists and I didn't know?? Damn!



    Thanks for the heads up Fuj, I'm going to go look for it right now.

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  52. Just came out in the last 2-3 months.


    Im a shoot interview guy. I love how shoots turned from bridge burning things of beauty to career retrospectives of guys not in the Kiss My Ass club...yet...

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  53. Ditto, me too. Well the match, not specifically the image, although the image was pretty awesome too.

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  54. Saw that image on the cover of a VHS tape at the local video rental place. I was only a very casual fan at that point. Thought it looked awesome. Rented the video and was blown away.

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  55. The episode of Superstars where Andre The Giant challenged Hulk Hogan to a match at Wrestlemania 3 was the very first wrestling program I ever saw and I stumbled onto it by accident; I was not a wrestling fan at all up until then, I used to think that wrestling was just two guys laying down for an hour and putting each other and the crowd to sleep.

    So when I saw this segment, what I saw was great drama, the big question that had you guessing "Will he or won't he accept Andre's challenge?" and an audience not only not asleep but going completely nuts at everything that was happening in front of them. And the hour flew by so fast that it was anything but dull unlike the giant majority of sports in general at the time.
    When the show ended, I said to myself "That was not what I expected at all, that was a lot better than what I expected and when's the next episode?".

    A few days later, while I was channel surfing I stumbled onto an episode of Prime Time Wrestling and I found out about Wrestlemania 3 and what exactly it was. That episode, thanks mainly to Gorilla and Bobby doing such a great job of keeping the viewers entertained and hooked, was so awesome that by the end I said to myself "I have to watch Wrestlemania 3!".

    From that point on, I was hooked. I tried to watch the WWF TV shows as often as I could and I asked my cable company (dearly departed Telco) what PPV was and how I could order Wrestlemania 3.

    What's interesting about this reminiscing is that while I watch all kinds of different wrestling nowadays, for the first two years of my fandom (1987-89), I was solely a WWF fan. I didn't discover the NWA until 1989 and I didn't discover any other wrestling federations until I upgraded to the big ugly satellite dish in 1992 and that was an amazing experience in itself, being able to find USWA, ICW, SMW, GWF and several other feds at just about any time of the day not to mention being able to have HBO, Cinemax, Showtime and The Movie Channel when all of those channels were at their absolute best. That was such a fun time.

    But the overall point is that anything can really turn you into a wrestling fan and keep you as a fan through the good times and the bad times. Even though the general consensus is that wrestling has currently been in a down cycle for 10 years-plus now, wrestling continues to be fun for me and I would imagine it continues to be fun for a lot of people on this blog and elsewhere.

    So here's hoping that 2013 will be a better year for the wrestling industry and hopefully continue to bring us more than enough good to outweigh the bad.

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  56. didn't Scott write something about this idea once? or was at discussed on this blog?

    anyway, I remember that there had been several great ideas regarding the "Rocks throat gets crushed" angle. best thing: they would/could tease him doing a promo several times only to not being able to utter a single word.

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  57. Exactly! So the eventual "Finally..." line carries even more impact and that return promo is epic, before getting back to business and avenging his injury.

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  58. I suppose the 2000 or 2001 Kurt Angle feuds could have been great for it too. Kurt & Stephanie running their mouths every week while Rock cannot fire back.

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  59. Did Steamboat and Hennig ever wrestle? And maybe I'm wrong here, but is Ricky Steamboat the greatest wrestler of all time? Did he ever have a bad match against anybody? Though he was overshadowed by Hogan, people went batshit for him whenever he wrestled

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  60. Has an armdrag ever meant shit outside of Steamboat? He was SO awesome -- I think I actually have a man crush on him -- He and Savage could do no wrong together -- How was Tony Garea never an extra on The Sopranos??

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