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Confessions of a wrestling fan


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I guess if your lasting image of Flair is the old guy being forced to act crazy and elbow drop his sportscoat?  Or the flabby old guy wresting in a shirt?  

 

But even then....

 

We need a membership screening process

 

Might I suggest....

 

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Most of my Flair criticisms are only to the claim that he's the Greatest of All Time. If I knock the guy ever it's really only in response to the valid arguments FOR that claim. 

Agreed. "Greatest of all time" is a subjective question at best but to be a wrestling fan and not like Flair at all is like not liking Michael Jordan but being a Bulls fan.

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I have vague memories of Flair from when I was a child living in Florida, seeing him on mid-atlantic tv, probably shortly after his return from his plane wreck injuries. But we moved around a lot, so didn't always have that viewing option. But back in the late 70's- early 80's, you could legitimately become a Flair fan simply by reading the Apter mags. First match I can remember clearly was watching him wrestle Kevin Von Erich on World Class tv and basically being like, Yeah he really is that good. So long story short, I also don't get wrestling fans who, at the very least, don't appreciate Ric Flair. 

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At what point in time though is Flair's legacy diminished though?

 

Hindsight being 20/20, he should have retired after his first WWF run. At the time, I cared very little for him post 1999.

Flair should have moved into a managerial role around 95 or 96, because he was still really entertaining.  Flair wasn't terrible in the ring at that point, but he couldn't go in the ring like he once could, and WCW wasn't putting him in a position to do it if he could.  I'm not saying that Flair's entire career was great, but he was I wish I could still say unquestionably great for a really long time.  If you want to talk about the best wrestlers of all time, you have to talk about Ric Flair, even if you don't think he's #1.  People talk about the length of Cena's run, but Flair was a credible main event guy for at least 20 years.  Not liking Flair is like not liking Babe Ruth, Jim Brown, or Michael Jordan, he is almost the the living personification of professional wrestling.  I'm not saying you guys aren't entitled to your opinions as wrestling is about as subjective as things get, but I honestly don't understand where you are coming from at all. 

 

Diamonds are forever and so is Ric Flair

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I didn't watch a whole lot of WCW until my teens, so my first real exposure to him was crazy old man dropping elbows on suit jackets, which current me loves a lot more than I did then.

It wasn't until I got his first 3 DVD set that I had any real appreciation for him.

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That first 3 disc clloection was my first exspore to Rics work outside the last 4 months of WCW and the first two runs of his second WWE run. I remeber the first time watching that match with barry and thinking "this is wrestling" alot of good shit on that DVD.

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When I was in 9th grade, I got in a fight with my friend because I said I liked the Dudleys and the Headbangers, and I was informed I couldn't like both.

I like a lot if terrible wrestlers and wrestling. Probably the most egregious example is being really in to the whole 'powers that be' storyline with Russo in late period WCW.

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At what point in time though is Flair's legacy diminished though?

 

Hindsight being 20/20, he should have retired after his first WWF run. At the time, I cared very little for him post 1999.

Then, we would not have gotten the " abuse of power" speech in Greenville, arguably the high point of the WCW nitro era (even if Benoit's presence tarnishes it a little now).

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If Flair had stayed retired after he lost the retirement match to Hogan in '94, it would probably have worked.  I mean, you would lose a lot of great stuff (the Horseman reunion on Nitro, the random absolute classic with Eddy also on Nitro, that great "one last shot" match with Triple H on RAW, the bloody match with H at Taboo Tuesday, the note perfect last 30 seconds of his retirement match with Shawn...) but you could see him transitioning to being a manager there (and probably having the occasional match where he gets his comeuppance) and his legacy would be etched in stone.

 

The notion he should have retired after the WWF run is, to me, batshit crazy, because I wouldn't lose the 93/94 WCW stuff for anything.

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If anything has tarnished his legacy, it's still living the gimmick years after he retired, went broke, got remarried and divorced several times, etc.

And it stinks that people both know and give a fuck about that shit.

 

 

Here's an unpopular opinion:

 

Hearing about that stuff... kinda makes me like Flair more.

 

Sure, it sounds messed up, and admittedly, it probably is. But there's just something about hearing about Flair's escapades makes me say, Jesus Christ, this is the pro wrestling version of Motley Crue, Ozzy, and Diamond David Lee Roth getting coked up and throwing TVs out of hotel windows and bangin' thousands of girls and jet-setting around the world putting on the greatest show on Earth every single night of their lives, doing what they want, when they want, and not giving even a portion of a fuck. Is the guy broke? Sure. But God dammit, when did life become about the destination and not the journey?

 

Call me weird, call me immature, but there's something romantic to me about the whole thing-- this guy completely gave his life to his craft and bled every night of his life for it. If Flair were some French impressionist painter, we'd teach out kids about him in university level art history classes. But it's dirty, shitty, carny, rock 'n roll pro wrestling, and so guys like that... they're just for us. And I'm 100% fine with that.

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My initiation to classic Flair was that first DVD set too. Which leads me to another confession: when I was a kid I always thought WCW was the second rate company and never watched it until kids went apeshit over Goldberg when I was in school. And then I found out about this guy Raven that blinded a dude and from there it was Apter mags, WCW cruisers, and me watching scrambled ECW PPVs on TV just to hear the commentary. Seeing the live Horseman reunion and him going off on Bischoff was indeed awesome because Flair had been off TV for awhile and it built up his mystique to me and it is still one of the strongest moments they ever pulled off, Benoit or no Benoit standing in the background. The emotion still hits a raw nerve. 

 

We're also forgetting Naitch vs. Big Show in ECW where they went garbage style. That was nutty, especially knowing how Flair felt about all that stuff.

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I have to say, I know the landscape was changing by that point, but for a long time after that ECW on SciFi match against Show, I often wondered what things would have been like if Flair became what Terry Funk was in the '90s in ECW. Can you imagine if the original ECW had lived, and Flair showed up there? Flair vs. Shane, Flair vs. Dreamer, Flair vs. Funk (with a different stylistic spin, naturally)... hell, even as late as 99/00, Flair vs. Steve Corino would have been loads of fun, especially once Dusty got involved.

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