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[1993-09-19-WCW-Fall Brawl] Ric Flair vs Rick Rude


Loss

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  • 3 months later...
  • 1 year later...

It was better than I thought it would, and Flair gets tons of credit for me for going the extra mile, busting out some neat stuff like the wrist work earlier on, jumping from the top rope to the outside, busting out the old butterfly suplex, and trying to kick off the pace. Rude is good on selling, but his offense consist more and more on restlholds and shouting toward Fifi (who looks awesome here), not to mention he does the absolute minimal amount of bumping now. His tights are classic Rude though. No luck for Rude, as WCW just withdrew from the NWA and the title is NWA no more, just called World Heavweight title on that show.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 2 weeks later...

This was a pretty crazy show from a copyright/trademark standpoint. We have Flair and Rude fighting for the "Big Gold Belt" and earlier, the "Big Van" part of Cactus Jack's promo was muted. Hearing Jesse rip on Flair like he's any other babyface is weird and it just doesn't work. Jesse could go after Hogan because he thought Hogan was a hypocrite who was protected--when you have a guy who calls himself the Dirtiest Player in the Game, even as a babyface, that tack doesn't really work. Flair busts out a top-rope chop to the floor! Well, that was cool. Flair works hard, looks good overall, and is really energetic here, but Rude looks just about done. Rude pulls brass knucks out of his trunks while he's in the figure four and cold cocks Flair to win the Anonymous World title. Three screwjob heel title victories on one show is too many, considering how similar the finishes all were.

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  • 2 months later...

This is a weird bag of a match here. It seems like Flair was attempting to work a classic 70's style NWA title match. Rude just wasn't up to the challenge. The early work with Flair busting out some real compelling arm work.This was a real neat base for the match. I must say Rude was fantastic selling the arm early. Eventually Rude takes control and about a minute into his heat segment he shit cans all the work that was done to the arm. This is a big departure from his 92 series with Steamboat when it came to his sustained selling. His offense is pretty boring. I liked his verbal trash talking. He did this long camel clutch spot. The upside their was a payoff to this long spot. Flair transitions back on top and now it seems to be working more of a personal grudge feud which I thought the build for this match was based on. We then seen Flair transition to working the leg. I really liked Flair's 2nd rope leg whip. We build to the finish which was kinda bland. Overall, I liked aspects of this, but man I wonder what type of match Flair would have had with Austin or Pillman here.

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  • 1 year later...
  • 1 year later...

Two matches, two horrible finishes for this card. Ar least I know why Rude made a big deal of bringing Fifi into the ring, but why wouldn't she run for cover? She's not a worker and never has been, so why did she just stand there where either guy could hurt her, either accidentally or on purpose? It couldn't have possibly been more obvious that Flair was going to get hosed somehow, and while it frees him up to go for the real ​World title (Vader's), it also accidentally makes Fifi look like a double agent for Rude.

 

The brass knucks finish was at least somewhat different, but Rude looked like he'd shot his wad long before then. If his back bothered him that much, why did he get in the ring? It wasn't like the NWA World title or whatever they were forced to call it was a big deal by now, even while Flair had it. I don't think Rude ended up doing much with it at all, although the rest of this set could prove me wrong about that.

 

I didn't mind Jesse at all; not only was Flair a face here, he was wrestling an admitted favorite of Jesse's from way back. The last thing I was expecting was a call that was unbiased and made sense.

 

I thought the rule of thumb was that Flair always missed the move off the Flair Flop when he was a heel and always hit it as a face. It's good to see that Flair decided to live outside his comfort zone for once in his life; I guess he figured that hitting that move off the top to the floor was a nice substitute.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1993-09-19-WCW-Fall Brawl] Ric Flair vs Rick Rude
  • 1 year later...

Rewatched this tonight and Shoe is spot on. Through ten minutes and Flairs arm work I thought we were viewing a lost classic, Rude gets on offense and things slow wayyyyy down. I still think this is a terrific Flair performance and overall this is better than its rep but it is an interesting what could have been if Flair would have matched up with a more game physical opponent. ***1/2

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