32 years ago today Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat and “Macho Man” Randy Savage stole the show at WrestleMania III. The Intercontinental championship clash between the two has long been heralded as one of, if not the greatest match in WrestleMania history.
Steamboat sent the following out on Twitter today in recognition of the anniversary.
Ricky “the Dragon” Steamboat vs “Macho Man” Randy Savage – WrestleMania III
Steamboat also spoke to the WINCLY podcast in 2018 about the match.
“Randy and I never really got to work (before WMIII),” Steamboat said. “The first time was when we hooked up at WrestleMania, so we didn’t have a chance to have a bunch of matches under our belt to get ready for the big show and try some stuff.”
In storyline, Macho Man had damaged Steamboat’s throat by hitting him with the ring bell from the top rope onto the guardrail below. Several vignettes were shown featuring Steamboat learning to speak again on WWE programming.
“Everything that was put together for the match was strictly based on our gut feeling on the story we were trying to tell. We tried to make it a championship match and that’s the bottom line.”
Randy Savage and Ricky Steamboat Plan WMIII Match
One of the stories surrounding this match was that Savage wanted it entirely planned out in advance. Steamboat would later say this was a far cry from how he was used to doing things at that point.
“We took notes on a legal pad, a yellow legal pad, and, God, I can’t remember how many steps we had, but once we got the match down, I’ll give you an example, at night, I would get with Randy and say, ‘okay, number 32 is this, this, and this. Tell me the rest of the match.’ And he would go, ‘number 33 is this, this, and this. 34 is…’ and we would quiz each other back and forth, back and forth, just so we would have it.”
