In the fall of 1985, the WWF was Hulk Hogan’s company. Andre the Giant was a legend, and the roster underneath them was stacked with big personalities but not always big wrestling.
Into that mix came Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, a decade-long NWA veteran fresh off a career-defining run with Ric Flair in the Mid-Atlantic territory, now working undercard matches for Vince McMahon.
He needed a feud that would establish him as more than a talented newcomer. He got one against Don “The Magnificent” Muraco, and the four months that followed did more to show Steamboat as a can’t-miss talent than anything since his arrival.
Ricky Steamboat and Don Muraco: How It Started
The spark came on the September 14, 1985 taping of Championship Wrestling. Steamboat pinned Mr. Fuji, the veteran-turned-manager, in a clean roll-up.
Fuji’s client, Don Muraco, didn’t take it well. He jumped Steamboat after the bell. In some broadcasts, the beatdown escalated into Muraco busting a chair over Steamboat’s back in the aisle on the way to the back.
It was a standard heel ambush by wrestling’s usual playbook but planted the seed for what the promotion would lean on over the following weeks.
The two were natural opponents on paper. Both were Hawaiian-born and worked a physical, chop-heavy style, but the promotion sold it as a legitimate grudge between countrymen rather than a style clash.
Muraco was coming off arguably the best stretch of his career. He wasn’t a stepping stone. He was a legitimate main-event level heel being fed to a rising babyface, which is why the program made Steamboat look important.
The Dragon and the Beach Bum: How Steamboat vs. Muraco Built a Star
The Hanging Angle
The moment that defined the feud, and arguably Steamboat’s entire first year in the company, came shortly after. During a scheduled singles match on Championship Wrestling,
Muraco attacked before the bell rang, so the contest never officially started. Fuji and Muraco grabbed Steamboat’s black karate belt and used it to hang him by the neck from the top rope, leaving him dangling with his feet off the mat while Muraco whipped him with a second belt.
It was ugly, cheap, and worked exactly as intended. Tito Santana and Junkyard Dog had to run out to cut him down before real damage was done.
Wrestling historians still point to that image as one of the era’s more visceral angles. One retrospective blog described it as leaving Steamboat struggling greatly while dangling with his feet off the floor, a visual gruesome enough that fans who’d never seen Steamboat’s NWA work suddenly understood the stakes of the rivalry.
Commentary at the time, delivered in part by Muraco himself sitting in on the broadcast, only added to how personal it felt; this wasn’t a manager doing the talking for his guy; it was Muraco revelling in it directly to the camera.
Ricky Steamboat and Don Muraco – The Matches
What followed was a steady stream of house show singles matches between Steamboat and Muraco through the back half of 1985. Few had clean finishes; most ended in count-outs, disqualifications, or interference from Fuji.
The October 18th, 1985 bout at the Hartford Civic Center was one of the best of the series. It was a hard-hitting affair full of rope-running, stiff chops, and Muraco bumping his neck off the bottom rope on a clothesline before Fuji’s interference set up a foreign-object finish.
Steamboat kept working over Fuji directly, including a Kung Fu Challenge win on the November 2, 1985 edition of Saturday Night’s Main Event that let him settle a score with the manager himself, not just his hired muscle.
It was smart booking. Instead of letting Muraco simply beat Steamboat down every week, the promotion gave the audience regular payoffs against Fuji, keeping them invested while the Muraco program built toward Steamboat’s bigger payoff.
That conclusion came on January 4, 1986, on Saturday Night’s Main Event IV. Steamboat teamed with Junkyard Dog against Muraco and Fuji in a tag match, and Junkyard Dog scored the pin on Fuji with a headbutt.
It wasn’t Steamboat pinning Muraco directly, but it closed the book on the rivalry decisively, with the good guys standing tall.
From start to finish, the program ran roughly four months on national television, though the house-show circuit kept the two connected well into the spring alongside other opponents.
Ricky Steamboat and Don Muraco –
Why The Magnificent One Was the Right Opponent
It’s worth pausing on how strange it would look today to hand a newcomer this kind of opponent, because by 1985 standards it was a real gift. Muraco wasn’t some journeyman brought in to lose.
He’d held the Intercontinental title twice already, had a bloody history with Bob Backlund, Jimmy Snuka, and Pedro Morales, and crowds had spent years jeering him with “beach bum” chants for his cocky, sunburnt tough-guy persona.
He was arrogant in the ring in a way that read clearly even to a first-time viewer. He’d once famously eaten a submarine sandwich mid-match while dominating an opponent, just to underline how little he respected the man across from him.
Put a total unknown over a heel with that kind of pedigree, and the promotion was signalling to its audience that Steamboat mattered.
Everyone Who Got Involved
Mr. Fuji was the connective tissue throughout. As Muraco’s manager, he wasn’t just a mouthpiece; he was an active participant, taking part in the hanging angle himself.
Fuji was absorbing plenty of Steamboat’s comeback offence along the way, including a memorable spot where Steamboat choked Fuji with his own necktie in retaliation.
Tito Santana and Junkyard Dog were the recurring cavalry, running in to make saves and eventually teaming with Steamboat on the house-show trail against the Muraco-Fuji pairing.
Steamboat even shared the ring with Hulk Hogan against the duo on at least one occasion, a sign of how seriously the company was starting to take him.
Behind the scenes, the story of how the feud played out in the ring has been told by both men. In a shoot interview years later, Steamboat recalled being stunned by how much bigger Muraco had gotten since he’d seen him wrestling in Florida.
Despite his size and frame matching what he remembered, he was more than capable of doing what he had been able to do years earlier.
Muraco, for his part, was equally complimentary when discussing the pairing. When asked about working with Steamboat, he called him “very considerate” as an opponent and noted they did strong business together because Steamboat always prioritized making money over making himself look good, which made him easy to work with.
Ricky Steamboat and Don Muraco –
The Impact
It’s easy to undersell what a program like this did for a guy like Steamboat in the early-to-mid-1980s WWF. This was not a company built around work rate; it was built around character.
A wrestler had to prove himself through a program with an established name before the crowd would buy him as a threat to anyone above him on the card.
Muraco, fresh off headlining with Hogan and holding the King of the Ring crown, was about as credible a measuring stick as the midcard had to offer.
So losing repeatedly to Fuji and getting strung up by his own belt did not diminish Steamboat. If anything, it made his eventual victories mean something and gave the audience a reason to view him as a fighter rather than just a well-conditioned athlete doing chops.
The timing mattered too. Steamboat had arrived in the company only months earlier following a decorated run in the NWA’s Mid-Atlantic territory, one built on programs against Flair, Wahoo McDaniel, and Sgt. Slaughter.
WWF audiences didn’t know that history. The Muraco feud, punctuated by a genuinely disturbing visual and a satisfying string of payoff wins over Fuji, was the introduction that told a new audience Steamboat belonged.
Within a year, he was in a widely praised program with Jake “The Snake” Roberts. By WrestleMania III, he was main-eventing the undercard in what’s still considered one of the greatest matches in the promotion’s history.
This would be Steamboat’s match against Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage. None of that happens without first proving he could hang with a genuine WWF headliner like Muraco.
For Muraco, the feud was one entry in an already accomplished 1985 that included the King of the Ring win and the Hogan program, and he later aligned with Adrian Adonis and Bob Orton Jr. against Roddy Piper before eventually turning babyface as “The Rock” late in his run.
He never held a grudge about the direction of the story; by his own account, business between them was good, and that was always the point.
It was a feud that ushered in Ricky ‘The Dragon’ Steamboat’s time in the World Wrestling Federation. Fans witnessed a transition from white gear to black, and with it, an increased sense of anger, frustration, and determination. Muraco and Fuji were the right antagonists for Steamboat at the right time.
The Dragon and The Magnificent One. Ricky Steamboat and Don Muraco. Two men who both called Hawaii home but couldn’t have been more different as adversaries. But when they came together, they managed to tell a story that only these two legends could tell.
Sources
- “Don Muraco Shoot Interview,” Kayfabe Memories: https://www.kayfabememories.com/TapeReviews/shootinterviews/donmuraco-2.htm
