RICKY STEAMBOAT

I worked with Roman Reigns, Seth Rollins, Bray Wyatt. Those guys have come along and are doing very well now.

I feel that we really had some good, athletic women wrestling out there and they work just as hard as the guys and put on a heck of a show.

In the mid-'80s when the business took a big change, everybody was living their character.

I can remember that my match with Savage at WM3 lasted less than 20 minutes.

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.

I'm not suggesting that every moment in the match has to be huge, but you've got to space it out to have a couple of really outstanding moments.

I know one thing, after the match with Savage at Wrestlemania III, I was gassed. I went back to the locker room and fell on the floor.

I learned so much from Ric Flair... just listening to him guide me early in my career.

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.

Fans watching need to be able to connect the dots in your match and the story that you're trying to tell.

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.

A memorable moment was when I got inducted into the hall of fame in 2009.

I remember the first couple of years when I was coming up through the ranks, some of the old-timers would take me aside after the match and critique me.

I honestly think that we're getting away from the basic structure of wrestling and it causes wrestlers' careers to come up short because of injuries.

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.

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.

On my wish list, a guy I would have loved to work with in our prime would have been Shawn Michaels.

When I started in the business, getting in the ring, most nights I'd look across at a 15-20 year veteran. And every night, he would take me to school.

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.

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.

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.

A lot of guys would say that I was like a 'damn chameleon'. It doesn't matter who you are in the ring with, you can adjust and adapt.

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.

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.

Guys like myself and Arn Anderson, we're always trying to pass knowledge along.