Ricky Steamboat Confirms He Asked For Ricky Starks To Beat Him Down

Wrestling legend Ricky Steamboat has confirmed that his beatdown at the hands of Ricky Starks was actually his own idea.

'The Dragon' was attacked by Starks on the August 5 edition of AEW Collision, after preventing the younger star from cheating to win a Real AEW World Championship match against CM Punk.

Starks beat down Steamboat after the bell and whipped him with a belt, a detail which led to the Strap Match against Bryan Danielson at All Out. In a recent interview with Bill Apter for Sportskeeda, Steamboat confirmed that this beatdown was his own pitch, explaining:

"They suggested an outcome that I didn’t like. I said, ‘Look, you’re doing a slow turn with this kid, Ricky Starks. You’re trying to turn him heel, and what you’re suggesting, there’s not gonna be any heat on him.’ So I made the suggestion of what everybody saw. ‘I’d like to put some heat on this kid.’ 

“They had a result where everything would go down as it was, and as he would spin me around and kind of take a shot, I would block it and give him some big chops, and he would take a bump through the ropes out on the floor and scurry up the ramp. It would be like a happy, happy moment. I’m thinking, ‘Where’s the heat there? Where’s the heat for the kid?’ I caught him with his foot on the ropes, so that was a happy moment.

"[The original plan] was absolutely no heat. Plus, the fact that I’m 70. [...] So I said, ‘We gotta turn this around to where he’s gotta catch me off-guard and sucker me and get me down and do something to where it’s almost to the point of disgusting and shameful.'"

H/T to Fightful.