Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat 4/2/89 – 2 out of 3 falls for the NWA World Heavyweight Title – Clash of the Champions VI: Ragin' Cajun

Like many Midwestern children of the 80s, my introduction to professional wrestling was courtesy of the mainstream rise of Hulk Hogan and the World Wrestling Federation. Sure, there were kids cooler than me with bitchin' parents that took them to see the local AWA shows when they were kids, but I was not among that elite sect that knew of the Hulkster or Bobby “The Brain” Heenan or “Mean” Gene Okerlund before they were swept up in Vince McMahon's quest for world domination. So for me, it was a babysitter that let me stay up late enough to see Hogan and Paul Orndorff escape a cage at the same time on Saturday Night's Main Event. That was exciting enough (and the boys in my 7th grade class debated feverishly the following Monday whose feet hit the floor first. “Hogan's legs were bent! Orndorff's were straight!” Man, Jesse Ventura really thought that made a difference, didn't he?), but it wasn't until later that year, when the Intercontinental Champion, The Honky Tonk Man, besmirched the virtue of former champ Randy Savage's manager, the lovely Elizabeth, that I got hooked.

The “Macho Man” took on Honky Tonk's stablemate, Bret “Hitman” Hart, on a November 1987 edition of SNME, and the ferocity displayed by Savage while defending his manager's honor was captivating, eventually leading me back several months to a VHS copy of WrestleMania III rented from the gas station down the street. And that's what led me to probably the best WWF match of the 1980s—Randy Savage vs. Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat for the Intercontinental Championship. And if Randy Savage was a crucial discovery, well, Savage vs. Steamboat was a revelation.

Until Savage vs. Steamboat, the wrestling I had seen (with the exception of Savage/Hart) was mostly cartoon characters punching each other, much like that Hogan/Orndorff cage match. But this—this was a pair of athletes trying to one-up each other, to prove who was the best...with a healthy dose of babyface revenge thrown in for good measure. Recovered from a vicious attack on his larynx months earlier, Steamboat came at Savage with passion and drive, seemingly trying for a pin every 10 seconds  (in fact, that match featured 22 near-falls in 14 ½ minutes of action) and pointedly lifting Savage up by his throat early in the contest. This was skill, storytelling, and wrestling that finally blew my brain open—and I needed more.