[1993-07-31-WCW-Saturday Night] Interview: Ric Flair

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

I guess this would be true for every wrestler, but there is a vast difference between Ric Flair with nothing to do and Ric Flair in an angle. His promos are great in the middle of a feud, and are not so good when he doesn't have any immediate grudges. There may have been a time in years past when Flair could have done a stock promo and still been great, but he's past that point by 1993 and needs to be part of something interesting for WCW to get the most out of him, and most of the time, that's not really true. He spent way too much of the year spinning his wheels.

[Kevin Ridge]

Flair is World Champion again. He mentions wanting to wrestle other guys like Vader, Rude, Blondes. Felt more of a lets get you on TV with the belt thing. He didn't really say much.

[PeteF3]

Fifi holds the NWA World title on the Flair for the Gold set while Flair gives us a "believe in yourself" motivational speech. Flair's always an easy listen but there has been a lot of Flair-by-numbers on this set. Agreed that he needs something to do--normally I love it when Flair starts rattling off challengers but here it just seems like a way to BS through the promo.

[soup23]

This is really suffering from where it lands on the disc as we have just seen 4 great promos in a row with really heated feuds and here is Flair, removed from Flair for the Gold, but with not much on his mind overall.

[garretta]

Not even Ric Flair can do much in a little over a minute. This was actually better than his promo following the win over Windham; the volume was tolerable, he rattled off several possible challengers for his belt, and he even threw in a bit of a positive message for the youngsters.

 

If Flair's directionless at this time, it's because no one really knows what to do with him. Is he better off being in his own totally separate section of the promotion, with his own list of challengers and his own feuds, and coexisting more or less peacefully on the same plane with Vader, or do they want to build to a money match and unify (or so they thought at the time) the NWA and WCW World titles? Both options are definitely on the table at this point, and only when Bischoff and company pick one and start to build toward it will Flair start to get back on track.

 

If there's no more AFFTG​, why are they still using the set? I can see keeping Fifi around as a valet, but keeping Flair's interview set is like asking Mean Gene to do interviews on the ​Piper's Pit​ set after Rod left at Mania III: it makes no sense. At least get the man his own green screen to do promos in front of.