10 Things You Didn't Know About Ricky Steamboat
4. He Wanted To Work As A Heel During His Second WWE Run
Ricky Steamboat's second WWE run is not quite as well remembered as his first, and for good reason. In the cartoonish days of the early 1990s, the company decided to rechristen the established star as simply "The Dragon," make little to no reference to his past accomplishments, and force him to breathe fire.
This tenure was very short - vignettes hyping Steamboat's debut started playing in February of 1991, and he was gone by November. Still, things almost went in a different direction. According to Steamboat, when he came back to WWE he wanted to work as a masked heel, at least until somebody managed to strip him of his mask. Pat Patterson, who was helping run things at the time, shot the idea down, telling Steamboat that he was a babyface through and through.
Would it have worked? On the one hand, Steamboat was arguably the best babyface in wrestling history - but on the other, if he was that good, he probably could have handled being a heel, too. Still, being a babyface is a lot harder than being a heel, so with his talents, maybe he made more sense always working face. It's a "what if" that can never be answered.