[1993-05-29-WCW-Saturday Night] Flair for the Gold: Sting

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

These are still terrible, as this time Flair, Sting and Arn are doing aerobics with a bunch of kids.

[El-P]

The worst of the bunch. Builds exactly nothing. Sting doesn't look that pissed at Flair. Hey, remember the Black Scorpion ? I guess times heals all wounds. You gotta love Sting getting to do aerobic with the kids while you can guess what Flair would do to the moms...

[Kevin Ridge]

The cynical me who just watched 97 yearbook would think this is a ploy to undermine Flair in WCW. McMahon needed to just call up CNN offices and allow Flair's non compete to expire immediately so they can just get him in the ring. The women doing exercises on step board the whole time had to be on drugs.

[PeteF3]

I'm at the point where hearing that saxophone music makes me want to cry. I have become an emo hipster version of Pavlov's dog. Flair and Arn are in workout gear and there's some chick on a stepboard. Sting is Flair's guest, also in workout gear. In the most astonishing development in the history of wrestling, Sting is actually WARY OF FLAIR at first, bringing up their past. Flair just kisses up in response and pleads with Sting to lighten up, because that's all behind them. Sting explains why he wears facepaint--it's to support kids who may not be the same as everyone else. Well, that's admirable, I guess--Sting beat the Be a Star campaign by a good 18 years. Oh God, kids are out to get autographs. Little Stingers for Sting, girls for Flair--that about sums things up, I guess. This is unwatchable, even by the low standards set by this segment.

 

Among many things to hate about this show is what a fucking spineless, asskissing pussy Flair has turned into. And Jerome's right--Sting pays about two seconds' lipservice to Vader, Rude, and Sid, but otherwise not a single sliver of attention is paid to any ongoing program. This, like the Lost in Cleveland skits and a lot of backstage shit today, is the work of some writer or writing committee trying to justify their own position.

[WingedEagle]

Groupie is working on a step up bar, while Flair & Anderson are in jumpsuits. Sting out to talk about Vader. Flair say there are rumors of Sid Vicious coming in, which is surprising since he hasn't debuted. Some kids out with moms and everyone joins in the exercising. Pretty pointless.

[soup23]

Sting being weary of Flair was the highlight here. I can't even defend this as this was completely pointless and really needed Vince in zubaz.

[garretta]

I actually liked parts of this, mostly Sting explaining why he wears the paint. It may have been a bullshit explanation, but at least it was designed to inspire people positively.

 

Did my ears deceive me, or did Sting say that the Horsemen were too good for him when he was a member?

 

I think I get where they were supposedly going with this segment now. There were plenty of comments above me about how this didn't build to anything wrestling related. Well, it wasn't designed to. I made the same mistake most of you did; I assumed that we were supposed to know that Flair was returning to the ring soon, and thus was only doing this until he could wrestle again. But that's not the case. WCW's presenting Flair as someone who's retired, who came back to specifically host this segment and ​only ​host this segment. He doesn't have any beef with anyone, he doesn't want to hype any feuds, he doesn't even want to talk ​about wrestling. As he said to Sting, wrestling's behind him now. He just wants to kick back with his guests and brag about Fifi. If a segment like this feels out of place on a wrestling show, it's ​supposed ​to. The question is: How are we going to get from this Flair to the one who's challenging the Blonds for the tag titles in approximately two weeks at the next Clash?

 

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that WCW really didn't have any plans at all for Flair as a wrestler, that this was all he was ever supposed to do on WCW programming, that they brought him back for........well, for what reason exactly? As of this moment in time, he has no business on WCW television, no reason to even be seen. If they wanted an interview segment, they should have brought back ​The Body Shop​ and waited to resign Flair until he could be used to promote matches, if not actually wrestle them, which would have been right about now. But they couldn't wait to show Vince that they'd gotten back what he'd thrown away, and so we have what we have now.

 

​AFFTG ​wouldn't have been a half-bad idea if it had debuted after Flair had reestablished himself in the ring and as the leader of the reformed Horsemen, but it's been so poorly executed that it's absolutely dead in the water. I still have the Rude and Slamboree segments to watch, and I sincerely hope that they're the last two I have to sit through. Just think about this when the subject of WCW's incompetence comes up: they managed to destroy through their stupidity interview segments hosted by two of the top five talkers in the history of the business according to most fans (Dusty and Flair).