Ronnie Garvin / Ricky Steamboat lame-duck title reigns.

By Scott Keith on August 6, 2018

Scott,

We all know about the Ronnie Garvin 'lame duck' title reign, where it was pre-determined that he would lose the title back to Flair at Starrcade. Further, its been mentioned previously that other wrestlers weren't keen to fill the role, and that they refused to job to Garvin during his title reign. Was there a similar plan for Steamboat's 1989 reign BEFORE he beat Flair for the title? Did Steamboat know that, although he would win several rematches, he'd be dropping the title back a few months later? Or was the reign cut short because, notwithstanding the quality of the matches, Steamboat's charisma (or lack thereof) wasn't moving the ticket / viewer needle?

And on a side-note, did Steamboat wrestle / defend against anyone apart from Flair during his reign as champion?

Steamboat always knew he was going to be a short-term champion, although they did spend much of 1989 trying to get Flair to step down as champion and move into a backstage role because he was too old. Steamboat absolutely would not have wanted to be champion as a permanent deal anyway, because he didn't want the travel and preferred hanging around his gym and such.

And yeah, he did a house show run as champion against some other people. Here's how his 1989 shook down from the amazing cagematch.net site:

https://www.cagematch.net/?id=2&nr=743&page=4&s=500

Looks like Iron Sheik, Kendall Windham and Ron Simmons were his unsuccessful challengers. However, I could have sworn PWI listed some title defenses against Dan Spivey at the time. Wonder if they were just made up?

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