The legendary Michael Jenkinson of the-newsroom.com writes…

Scotty…
While I don’t have any argument with Savage-Steamboat being a great match, I wouldn’t call it perfect for one big reason – the psychology of the match is all screwed up. To wit: Steamboat continually goes for pins and can’t pin Savage. Randy, however, gets a big visual pin after a ref bump, which is normally the babyface spot in a big match. And then Steamboat gets a fluke rollup pin after outside interference, which is more of a heel spot.
I’ve never understood why the psychology was done like that. But nonetheless, it is still a fantastic match to watch.

 

HERESY!  BURN THE WITCH! 

Ahem.

Anyway, here’s how I see it:  The visual pinfall is situational irony.  Savage, after months of cheating and taking the shortcuts, finally acts like a man and fights the match of his life against Steamboat, holding off every pinfall attempt that Steamboat gets, but when he finally gets the winning pinfall there’s no one to count it.  The Steele interference is just good old fashioned revenge, as he treated Steele like dirt for daring to show affection to "his" woman, and Steele gets to out-think him (by pre-empting his use of the ringbell, in yet more irony) and screws him out of the thing he TRULY loves the most — the title. 

The rollup, I grant you, but then Steamboat was lacking in a truly badass finish anyway.  On the other hand, it set up the finish of the greatest match in history two years later when Flair used Steamboat’s own reversal against him to win the World title, so it has that extra bit of awesomeness associated with it.