Steamboat made an appearance for AEW in 2022.
In August of 2022, AEW presented a special edition of Dynamite titled ‘House of the Dragon’. Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat was the guest timekeeper for the event.
As Steamboat was doing a virtual signing for Captain’s Corner, a chat user mentioned that they’d like to see him in AEW as an on-screen manager.
Steamboat would go on to share that he has been asked to join AEW in a behind-the-scenes capacity. He said he thinks highly of the company and they were going to take care of him financially, but he’s not interested in being on the road.
Believe this or not, I was already asked to come aboard (to AEW) in a capacity of (a road agent) and I just, you know… Not anymore (interested in doing it). No reflection on them, great company and everything and don’t get me wrong, the pay was gonna be great but I just — I’m at a point and time in my life, I’m trying to get off the road. 40-something years of being on the road, I just…
This past November, Steamboat came out of retirement and competed in a six-man tag that was hosted by the Big Time Wrestling promotion. He tagged with AEW World Tag Team Champions FTR (Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler) to take on Brock Anderson, Jay Lethal and Nick Aldis.
Initially, Steamboat had been approached about doing a singles match. Looking back on it, Ricky believes fans were okay with the match. He added that he wishes he had done more in it. He said there are two matches in his entire career that he could not wait to be over and it was his most recent bout and his match against ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage at WrestleMania III.
I was approached and it started out to be a singles match (Steamboat said about his retirement bout) and I said, ‘I know me.’ I turned 70 in February so this was like, what? November-ish?… That’s why I’ve been loaded on doing any kind of wrestling after you retire. I came back at WrestleMania 25 in ‘09, right? With Chris Jericho and that and me and (Jimmy) Snuka and (Roddy) Piper and I just — ‘singles match’. ‘How about a tag?’ And, ‘Ah’ so when they came back with the six-man and the two partners that I had and then finding out my opposition, the heels, I said, ‘Oh yeah, I think maybe we can pull it off.’ If I knew that I could get in the ring and do some Ricky Steamboat-isms and stuff. I did my arm drag and a couple of chops and this and that. So, I think the fans felt okay with it. I really haven’t had a chat with them about it. Me personally, I just wish I would’ve done a little bit more, now looking back and maybe done something with Arn Anderson’s son in the ring because Arn was there after all. But I was pleased. There was two moments in my career and I’ve had close to 5,000 matches and there was two moments that I was happy that the match was over. Two times. It was this time I was happy that the match was over and believe this or not, it was me and (Randy) Savage’s match at WrestleMania III. I was glad that it was over. Sometimes you get the opportunity to work with your guy. I call ‘em tune-up matches if you’ve got a big pay-per-view coming up or if you’ve got a really big show, and so, I found out that I wasn’t gonna have any tune-up matches with Savage because of the angle that he’s coming off the top rope with the announcer’s bell on my throat then Vince (McMahon) wanted me to make my debut at WrestleMania III. So, when I told Savage that and we started getting together after shows or times when we had our opportunities to start putting this match together, we were just flying by our gut feeling on whether or not this match was going to work.
There’s an interview here on the POST Wrestling site with Brian LaPalme, who taught Ricky Steamboat how to do fire breathing.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Captain’s Corner with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
