[1985-09-22-WWF-Toronto, ONT] Ricky Steamboat vs Don Muraco

[Superstar Sleeze]

Ricky Steamboat vs Magnificent Muraco - WWF, MLG 9/22/85 Lumberjack Match

 

Ricky Steamboat was fucking over in Toronto! Holy shit! Huge Steamboat chant during the heat segment. Every offensive move was met with a pop. When he won, you would have thought the Leafs had one the Stanley Cup! I don't know if this match took place before or after the hanging angle (highly recommend watching that before any Steamer/Muraco match to get some context). The Steamer came out cooking and a really hot start. Muraco was bumping and stooging. They did well establishing Lumberjack match stip. Besides a long nerve hold, I thought we got good Muraco tonight as he seemed very energetic possibly vibing off the hot Toronto crowd. I really liked the Asiatic Spike from the top and his shoulderbreaker. The finish was fun with Steamboat popping Ace Orton on the apron and then running Muraco into him for the win. Looking forward to more matches in this feud. ***

[shoe]

This was one of their better ones.

[Beast]

Fun sprint with a solid use of the stipulation. They clearly had more matches in the tank so this is a nice placeholder to keep the feud going for the time being. Steamboat is consistently "on" and makes every little moment mean something. And Muraco didn't take the night off, using effective power maneuvers and showing off some impressive selling. I especially liked Swede Hanson standing guard on the ramp, leading to Muraco getting almost atomic dropped back into the ring. If anything, this made me more interested in seeing a final blowoff with even more intensity.

If anything, the ending seemed to set up a Steamboat/Santana vs. Muraco/Orton match the next month which didn't happen, although Steamboat/Santana did face Muraco/Fuji in Minneapolis the same night as the next MLG show. Orton did have the history with Steamboat based on their previous MLG encounter, and he also would have made a very interesting challenger for Santana's IC belt around this time.