Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat on He “Didn’t Care” for Women’s Blood & Guts Match Due to “There Was So Much Going On”, AEW Being a “First Class Operation”, & Praise of Samoa Joe

This past Wednesday’s AEW Dynamite Blood & Guts 2025 show in Greensboro, North Carolina featured WWE Hall of Famer Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat making an appearance.

1WrestlingVideo’s Bill Apter held a recent interview with Steamboat. One of the topics discussed included Steamboat’s thoughts about the Women’s Blood & Guts match and his reasons why he “didn’t care” or didn’t like the match.

“I didn’t care to- god bless those girls that were in that match, but I didn’t care for it. I don’t know if it was just too much. I thought personally, I thought with- they had 16 girls in there or something like that, there’s just too much going on. Over in this one corner, two girls are doing something, two or three girls doing something in the middle of the ring. Then you go to the other ring and two or three girls are doing something. You couldn’t focus on anything because there was just so much going on, and for me, it’s hard to react. Some of them girls, I don’t, I never talked to them afterwards. I’m sorry. But, you know, how many times did they have to do that in their wrestling career? I would think a lot of them it might have been the first time, right?”

Steamboat also gave his thoughts about his experience backstage at the show and his praise of AEW for being a “first class operation” over how they take care of their wrestlers.

“The first class operation, I think. I know Tony Khan does a lot for the boys. His father owns the Jacksonville Jags. When I first talked to Tony a few years back, he said that he wanted of the wrestlers like the way his dad does football players. That is with any kind of retirement plans or hospitalization coverage and stuff like that. As you know, Bill, we never had any of that. Just talking to a few of the wrestlers backstage, they say, ‘yeah, he takes care of us.’ It’s real good. I do question some of the storylines that they like to you know, bring forward.”

Steamboat also gave his thoughts about if there were any talent in AEW that caught his eye and Samoa Joe being his choice.

“I’m sort of a fan of Samoa Joe. He’s got a mix of old school, new school.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com 1, 2, & 3