Watch Linda McMahon’s Wrestler Ricky Steamboat Get Beaten to Within an Inch of His Life Last Month on ‘Raw’ by Inexperienced Fellow ‘Soap Opera’ Cast

[posted 7/22/10 to http://wrestlingbabylon.wordpress.com]


YouTube links to the video of the live incident on USA cable’s Monday Night Raw on June 28 are below. This is not the same as the video at World Wrestling Entertainment’s official YouTube channel, which was edited after it became apparent that Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat had sustained accidental – but real and life-threatening – brain damage.

Steamboat (real name Richard Blood, age 57) remains hospitalized in Tampa. His injury was first described by World Wrestling Entertainment as a brain aneurysm, and not attributable to what had happened in the Raw skit. Later doctors supposedly said the problem was a “burst capillary,” caused by “blunt force,” which was expected to heal within days.

Latest from Dave Meltzer, the leading pro wrestling journalist, in the new issue of his Wrestling Observer Newsletter: “Nothing really new on Ricky Steamboat other than he was still in the hospital and in great head pain. The fact that everyone has been completely quiet on the subject and that he’s been in for so long is troubling.”

The links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIW7rEglTRA&feature=related (Part 1)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CQGa4hTYTPc&NR=1 (Part 2)

The “invasion” by bad guys of the celebration of the release of Steamboat’s retrospective DVD starts at around the four-minute mark of Part 1. The beatdown of Steamboat himself begins in earnest in Part 2. Hard-core fans will be able to confirm that this is the full footage and exactly where the WWE rookies might have botched their moves and endangered their fellow worker.


Irv Muchnick