NFL analyst shouts out WWE Hall of Famer – kind of

A portion of Sunday’s game between the Denver Broncos and Seattle Seahawks resembled something you might see in April at WrestleMania. And Adam Archuleta was on hand to call the action for CBS.

Seattle running back Kenneth Walker III had the ball and lowered his head and shoulders as Denver linebacker Baron Browning came up to make the tackle. While Walker actually flipped Browning over, the linebacker held on to make the tackle.

Archuleta’s commentary showed that while he has some knowledge of pro wrestling, it’s not particularly current.

“That looked like a WWF suplex. Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka or Ricky ‘The Steamboat’ Dragon with the suplex.”

Ricky “The Steamboat” Dragon.

He sure had some classic matches against Randy “The Savage Man” Macho and Ric “The Flair Boy” Nature.pic.twitter.com/wtFsqWKOkR

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 8, 2024

The tackle was something to behold. It came closer to resembling a back body drop or Canadian Destroyer — albeit not a particularly clean version of either move. So, we’ll give Archuleta points for calling it a suplex. Unless Archuleta felt the players resembled a couple of particularly rowdy pandas, we’re assuming he meant the WWE, which used to be known as the WWF. The name change happened in 2002 but while it’s been a while, old habits can be hard to drop for old-school fans. So we’re not going to hold that against him.

We have to point out that to the best of our knowledge, there is no wrestler called Ricky “The Steamboat” Dragon. We’re assuming that Archuleta was going for Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat and got his wires crossed somewhere.

Though, to be fair, while Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat is one of the all-time greats, Ricky “The Steamboat” Dragon does sound like a formidable wrestler. So, if there’s a grappler out there with that name, we would not mind being proven wrong.