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Like I’m sure most of you are, I’m a Ric Flair fan and
have been for years. He’s had some
of the best matches and cut some of the best promos in the history of the
business. However, being two weeks
shy of 29 years old, I was not following the business when Ric Flair was NWA
World Champion in the 80s. I missed
out on his matches with Race,
I started off as a WWF fan, and just knew Ric Flair as “the champion from WCW†or “that old guy.†When Flair showed up in the WWF in 1991, I didn’t take him seriously at all. He looked old, and even my grandmother, who was in her 60s at the time, asked how they let a guy that old in the ring. I considered his ring style boring, and he just didn’t seem to me like somebody who would be believable as WWF Champion. I never in a million years thought he could beat Hulk Hogan or Sid Justice.
When Flair won the Royal Rumble, I wasn’t impressed at him going over 60 minutes, I was still enough of a mark to think that he only won because Hogan eliminated Sid, and that there was no way Flair was making it past Wrestlemania with the title. Sure enough, he didn’t, and even though he won the title back months later, he lost it just a month later to Bret Hart of all people, and then lost his WWF career to Mr Perfect. To me, he looked like a loser and a guy who didn’t belong at the top, and I wasn’t sad to see him go.
Then all of a sudden, he went to WCW, and I just happened to start watching them around the time Flair returned, and all of a sudden, Flair was a real star. Not just a guy they brought to the main event to knock down like he had been in the WWF, but a legit big deal, and I was really excited about Flair chasing Barry Windham for the NWA Title, because whether or not you consider that reign a real World Title (another argument I’ll take up soon enough), I was like “Wow, he could be a ten time champion! Who will ever do that again?â€
All of a sudden out of nowhere, I was a Flair fan, though I didn’t recognize how great of a worker he really was until he beat Vader for the WCW Title at Starrcade 93. That night solidified me as a Flair fan, because not only was it a great match, not only was it a dramatic victory, but it was a heartfelt storyline in which Flair’s career, which he had put on the line for that match, was in serious jeopardy, and after vignettes all night long of Flair saying goodbye to his family, driving to the arena, and preparing for the match, him beating Vader, then going on to be congratulated by Sting and Ricky Steamboat in the back, was a huge moment and made me realize what a big deal Flair really was.
After Starrcade and through the first half of 1994, Flair continued to have matches I really liked, first in a rematch with Vader in a cage, then two awesome matches with Ricky Steamboat, and then with Sting. During this time, WCW also did an All Nighter on TBS, which was a six hour block of classic NWA/WCW matches, many of which were Flair matches featuring him against Steamboat, Funk, and Luger. My grandma only let me stay up for the first hour or so, but I taped it and was glued to the screen the next day as, in between ridiculous segments featuring Chris Cruise, Bobby Heenan, Gene Okerlund, and Eric Bischoff hanging out at Tony Schiavone’s house arguing and eating pizza, I started to understand why Flair was as respected as he was.
Even though I wasn’t at a point where I appreciated the sheer workrate of those Flair matches (I was still a Bret Hart, Owen Hart, and Shawn Michaels WWF mark), the fact that he took a bunch of other guys I didn’t think too highly of at the time and made them look good impressed me.
In mid-1994, Hogan came and Flair was buried and then written out after losing a retirement match to Hogan at Halloween Havoc (14 years before he actually ended up retiring), and then he was brought back in mid-1995 and started jobbing to anything that moved, including Hogan, Savage, Sting, his own stooge Arn Anderson, and even had trouble beating Alex Wright.
At this point, I was mature enough to recognize what Flair was and get angry about the way he was being treated, and didn’t think he had a chance in hell of winning the triangle match against Sting and Luger at Starrcade 95, but he did and then went on later in the night to defeat Randy Savage and reclaim the WCW World Title. I was thrilled, and he had another great run in which he scored his first pinfall win over Hogan on Monday Nitro, as well as wins over Sting and Luger. Flair was back…and then he wasn’t. He dropped the WCW World Title to the Giant on an episode of Nitro and then got relegated to the US Title. I have to be honest, that just pissed me off because I definitely thought Flair was above the US Title.
Unfortunately, the NWO era would dawn and Flair would be buried over and over, repeatedly being beaten down and left for dead by the NWO. For years, he was stuck in the midcard working Syxx and Curt Hennig, but would finally come back in 1999 to beat Hogan for the WCW World Title in a cage, which popped me huge as finally, finally, finally, Flair had defeated Hogan for the title. Of course this being WCW, he dropped the title a month later, was committed to an insane asylum by his son, and then had two insultingly short title reigns in the last year of the promotion.
After the WCW Invasion concluded, Flair made his return to the WWF, but even though he came in as a storyline co-owner of the company, it was pretty clear that Flair was not going to be pushed as a main eventer here, either. By this point, he was starting to show his age, and even after losing to Undertaker, Vince, Triple H, and others, I was still holding out hope for one last World Title reign.
But time and opportunity passed by, and the chance of putting the World Title on him one last time (which would have been feasible on several occasions) never happened, and after more years of putting over Carlito, Kenny Dykstra, Chris Masters, Rico, and every other low level jobber you might see on TV a few times a year if they still have a job, Flair decided to call it quits.
Thankfully, his retirement was treated with respect, and helped to undo some of the damage done by over ten years of blatant misuse, but it kills me to think about what Flair, who could still wrestle better than 90% of the roster and can still do better promos than anyone in the company, could have done if they thought to put him in that position, a position he showed for over ten years that he could handle the pressures of.
Though Flair’s best days as a headliner were behind him when I first laid eyes on him in the WWF in September of 1991, the magic of videotape allowed me to look back years later, once I was able to appreciate workrate and promo ability, and see his uncanny ability to make even the least talented wrestlers on the planet look good, and understand what Ric Flair was really all about and why he was able to carry a WRESTLING company the way he had.
You can tell by the way my tone changed throughout this writing how my attitude toward him changed throughout the years. As has been impressed upon me, I amy not be able to appreciate Flair watching him on videotape as well as older fans did watching him throughout the course of his career, but I can certainly compare what he was doing even in the 80s to what WWE and TNA are doing today and see the difference as clear as day.
Was Ric Flair the greatest of all time? He certainly seems to have the best all around package. He definitely made a lot of stars, in several territories and promotions, over the years. He could not only handle, but embrace the pressures of carrying not just a company, but an entire family of territories on his back and still do a remarkable job. Do I wish he could have been more in his later years? Yes, absolutely, but as the Rolling Stones said, you can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need, and the business needed somebody like Ric Flair, and the NWA certainly needed Flair, and Flair delivered, and always gave his best no matter how he was treated, and that makes him somebody the business will never forget.
Feedback can be sent to stuwrestling@hotmail.com.
