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I walked into Eddie Graham's office, he took one look at me and said, 'You look a lot like Sam Steamboat. We're going to make you his nephew - Ricky Steamboat.'
Without our fans, we wouldn't have anything. I owe everything I have to the ones that paid money. It trickles down to them paying my salary, so I'm always thankful.
The doctors have said that they don't want me in the ring bouncing around or getting picked up and slammed down. They said the old head just can't survive anymore trauma.
Whenever you do big stuff in the ring - a big move or a big hit - you have to let that moment breathe. That allows a moment to sink in for the fans so they can reflect on it.
There are fans out there who have never seen Andre The Giant wrestle but have heard the name and heard stories about his career and have seen the highlights of Wrestlemania III.
A guy can do a stair-stepper for an hour or go out and run five miles, but there's a big difference between doing that and going out into the ring and being ready to go-go-go-go-go!
I was in the business for 20 years and look at Flair. He was probably approaching 35-40. But today, if a guy has good 8-10 year run, he is either considered that damn good or lucky.
I'll say there's a lot of good athletes out there, but the key thing that I see missing is being able to put it all together in order to tell a story. In every match you can tell a story.
The one moment above all that fans bring up from my career when they run into me is the Savage match. Here it is, 30 years later, and everywhere I go that's what people want to talk about.
I remember when we were having cage matches and Superfly Snuka was the first to do this - both of us were doing dives off the top rope - but at MSG he did off the top of the cage onto Don Muraco.
I learned early on as a baby-face you had adapt to their style. Ravishing Rick Rude had his own style and his own way with a little bit of some Ric Flair-isms. But I always learned to adapt myself.
Coming up the ranks, I've got to see those who were sons of professional wrestlers get in the ring when they were five years old. I would wrestle around with them. Guys like The Rock and Randy Orton.
I learned to listen as a good guy, how to fight back without throwing away the heat, and how to fight back while I was still hurting. That part would always keep you in the game and keep you in the match.
I'm back in the gym doing squats. I still do the old school stuff. I'm just not concerned about putting the weight on as much as just going through the motions to keep things lubricated and stretched out.
Every match should have a story in it and I see a lot of that lacking. I see a lot of guys doing a lot of good stuff, and I call it stuff, filling in the blanks in their match, but the stuff doesn't tie in.
The fans can bring a better match by getting more involved. So when a match is over, they might be talking about how good the match was, but little do they know, that great match was elevated because of them.
I've been in the business over 35 years and had over 6,000 matches and I am helping guys who have only been in the business maybe a year or two and 100 matches. I am taking my 6,000 matches and passing it along.
I understand that wrestling now has changed as opposed to what it was when I worked, but I still think you can apply some of the things that I talk about and just put your 2018 twist on it and still make it work.
It takes two guys to tell a story, paint a picture, so our audience can be entertained and brought into the match. You need to suck people in emotionally to a match, and it takes both parties to paint that picture.
Before, there were only four pay per views throughout the whole year. Guys who were doing soap opera storylines could build them up week after week. We had longevity, and that is one of the main reasons why people remember.
I remember the first time I climbed the cage - it was almost like a challenge from Snuka. I said, 'This is crazy. This is absolutely crazy!' I went ahead and did it but I only did it a couple of times. It scared me half to death.
The matches that I've been involved with as a referee, sometimes the heel likes to get up in my face a little bit and even at 65 years old, I don't put up with that crap. Most times or not, the poor guy gets chopped down a few times.
Jim Crockett could just advertise Ricky Steamboat and Ric Flair, and we would do great numbers just off of the two names being hooked up for the evening. Fans knew we'd go out there and give them a hell of a match, win, lose or draw.
When I take a moment and listen to the wrestling fans and they're shouting, 'C'mon Ricky, you can do it!' It helps me in my heart to know that there are people out there who paid good money to watch guys like us go out there and perform.
It is one thing that I get a lot of joy out of, and that is passing the torch. Some stuff I show young wrestlers, people haven't seen in 15 years. I show it to them and the gratification I get is when I see them do it out there in a match.
I don't like to use the word 'fake.' A lot of our stuff is choreographed. But there is a lot of physicality that happens during the course of a match and our careers. There's a lot of physicality that happens to us and you can't deny that.
If you think of the guys that I was in the ring with, when I looked across the ring at the other guy, whether it be Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Rick Rude, Don Muraco or Jake Roberts, a carpenter is only as good as the tools he has to work with.
Flair and I would work with one another sometimes seven nights a week, and with four weeks in a month, we had to keep changing up the matches with fans following the circuit every night. It would always test me and Ric to do something different.
I had virtually a three-month layoff from an injury angle we ran so I didn't wrestle at all. I was worried the most about my cardio and I tried to stay in cardio shape using a Stairmaster and treadmill but there's nothing like being in ring shape.
A lot of guys, if they're a face and they see their drawing ability start to falter, they'll turn heel and they're right back on top again. Same thing with a heel. All of a sudden they'll turn into a good guy. Ric Flair has done that throughout his career a number of times.
Look at the talent that has broken through. Bray Wyatt, Roman Reigns, Sami Zayn, Cesaro. There are a number of talents there. Everyone wonders if you give them the ball, are they going to score or are they going to fumble? Obviously, all the names I mentioned have scored very well.
The old-timers taught me about psychology. Whatever body part, for instance, you decided to work on, well, you worked on. If you're working on someone's arm, you don't go to the head with headlocks. You don't go to the lower body. If you start with a body part, you stay with a body part.
A lot of times we would feed off of the crowd. A lot of things that we were doing in the match was called on the fly. For example, Ric Flair and I would go into a match and have a couple of spots and moments set up. And then, of course, we would line up the finish. But the rest was called on the fly.
Whenever two guys got together, you asked, 'What body part would you like to work?' In my case, it was the arm. Most guys wanted to feed me for that arm drag. We always believed in storytelling, so if I had the arm, the heel would get away for a moment - or heel his way away - and then I would get back to it.
I've got 8 and 10 year old kids telling me about the match I had with Savage at WrestleMania III and that was 30 years before they were even born. But with the magic of the Internet, their dad tells them to watch a little bit of what they used to watch... It amazes me that we're passing it on from generation to generation.
When you are a face for a long time and you turn heel, your stock value immediately goes up, especially if you're able to pull it off in the ring and on the mic. Then you ride that horse as long as you can. When it starts to falter, and when attendance drops, then you can turn back babyface. And your stock value goes up again.