Big Time Wrestling made the announcement that WWE Hall of Famer Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, who is 69 years old, will be making his in-ring return on November 27 in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Steve Perkins, co-promoter of BTW, was a guest on The Business of the Business podcast, where he discussed the events that led to Steamboat’s scheduled return.
“So, and some of it, I’ll get into it as much as I can [Perkins said about Ricky Steamboat’s in-ring return] but obviously, everybody had heard about Ricky possibly getting back into the ring for Ric’s ‘Last Match’ and it didn’t happen for whatever reason and you know, it’s probably for a myriad of reasons that most the internet doesn’t get right but didn’t happen. But that allowed me to know that, hey, Ricky’s not against this. Ricky’s capable of doing this. This was close because Ricky’s agent was a friend of mine, Tony Hunter, who’s an agent for a lot of guys too. Bret [Hart] and I happened to be in Knoxville for a Comic Con and I was there with Bret. I just started asking Ricky questions and Ricky wasn’t adverse to doing it and I just went to Ricky and said, ‘Ricky, this night’s going to be about you. This is a night about Ricky Steamboat.’ We’re gonna do it at the [J.S.] Dorton Arena and that’s just a historic place for Ricky Steamboat, it’s an historic place for Jim Crockett. The amount of one-hour draws Ricky and Ric [Flair] probably had there is, you know, insurmountable, the number of times they probably went 60 minutes and it’s just a historical building and a great place and I said, ‘Ricky, it’s gonna be a classy thing. It’s gonna be all about you and we’ve got a hell of a lot of talent that’s gonna wanna jump on board and be around this’ so I took quite a bit of time to convince him and come to terms on it but it’s gonna be incredible. I know in my head who’s committed to be there and it hasn’t fully been announced because we’d love to get promos filmed first but… the talent on the card doesn’t end with Ricky Steamboat. It could be Ricky Steamboat in one match and you could take the ring down and go home and everybody would get their money’s worth because I don’t know if you’ve heard, I don’t think Ric Flair could have been more correct about it but when Ric was asked on his podcast about it, Ric said, ‘Hey, Ricky Steamboat wouldn’t be getting in the ring to do this if he wasn’t going to do it right and wasn’t gonna look like a million bucks’ and Ricky trains, Ricky works out, Ricky doesn’t have carbs after lunch. Ricky takes his body seriously now so, I guarantee no one will be disappointed by Ricky Steamboat in the ring.”
“I have spoken to Ric since Ricky said he was going to wrestle. I have not spoken to Ric Flair about wrestling Ricky Steamboat. That’s what I’ll say. But ideally, in a perfect world, yeah, you’d have Ricky Steamboat wrestle Ric Flair but, you know, that’s also a perfect world.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
Listen to “Episode 97: WWE, AEW, NJPW, GCW, MLW & more!” on Spreaker.
(H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions)
