Top Gun was an old movie Christopher Blair had seen. It had a character with a callsign Maverick in it. Blair noted, back then they flew those big, heavy atmospheric fighters, and that it must've been fun back then.

Blair's callsign Maverick had been a standing joke for a while. Back at the academy, he had a rep for being a by-the-book flyer. So, of course, they called him Maverick.^[1]