[1993-10-24-WCW-Halloween Havoc] Ric Flair vs Rick Rude

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes, and finally, this disappointing feud is coming to a close. Flair does a Rude Awakening!!! Terry Taylor was a special second ref as part of the buildup, which is stupidly negated when he takes a bump almost immediately after entering the match. I always thought that was so annoying, that Taylor, a wrestler, would sell an accidental bump that long. Rude hangs on to the title and tries to hang on to Fifi, but Flair stops him.

[El-P]

This is worst than their previous one. Rude is totally going on smokes and mirrors at this point, in his case he's overselling in the long run (selling a leg like nobody's business well too long after anyone would after a simple figure-4 spot), repeating pin attempts when there is no point really, and using basic moves only. And he barely bumps anymore. Kinda sad to watch. His tights are the best part of the match, just classic Rude. Fifi is looking great, but she oughta be the most useless valet ever as she doesn't get anything to do or say, ever. Flair works an autopilot here while he worked super hard the other time around, and the finish is bad. Yeah, Terry Taylor was wasted, I don't get the point at all. Not a good match, bad ending.

[Kevin Ridge]

Terry Taylor is an outside referee and proves his creditials by immediately doing a referee bump when he gets into the ring. A WCW crew member decides to reach into the ring and take away the foreign object Rude dropped. He had to hand it back to Flair since it was part of the finish. Just awful.

[PeteF3]

Not a great match with stunningly disappointing crowd heat. Flair busts out a Rude Awakening, which is awesome (don't ask me why this is still awesome in the face of modern-day finisher-stealing while I complained about the chop exchanges in Kawada/Kobashi. Flair busting out new offense is always cool). Randy Anderson gets bumped, and outside referee Terry Taylor (?!) takes over...and immediately gets knocked out. Schiavone's "Oh, for crying out loud..." sounded legit--you speak for all of us, Tony. Rude breaks out the knucks again, Flair gets them, Taylor counts two, Randy Anderson saw Flair use the object and disqualifies him. Cheap-ass, by-the-numbers Dusty finish. Rude tries to carry off Fifi afterward but Flair saves her. I actually liked this feud more than just about anybody else, insofar as I didn't hate it. And I didn't really hate this match, either--just the stupid, stupid ending. But it certainly was disappointing. And yeah, I have no clue why that ring crew guy felt the need to interject himself and grab the foreign object.

 

Best Rude tight designs, off the top of my head:

5. The road signs design from the first Survivor Series

4. Survivor Series '89, with his Rude's Brood teammates on the front

3. These--black-eyed Flair on one leg, Fifi on the other, jack-o'-lantern on the back

2. "I BEAT 'EM" over the heads of the top WCW babyfaces

1. The SummerSlam '88 double-secret pull-down reveal tights with Cheryl Roberts' face on them

[Gregor]

Taylor getting knocked out is bad, but right before that, when Anderson gets bumped, Taylor does this slow jog to the other side of the ring before sliding in, missing the chance to count a fall. Normally I'd assume that this was done as a parody, but in 1993 WCW it's generally safer to bet on incompetence. Then the random guy grabs the object and Ventura refers to Flair as Rude after the match. This had to be depressing to live through as a fan.

 

I thought Flair worked hard here. I watched only the second half, but he bumped, used top-rope offense, and even did Rude's finisher. Okay, bumping could still be him on autopilot, but the impression I got was that he was trying and it just didn't translate into a good match.

[garretta]

At least Jesse tried to make the crew member picking up the knucks and handing them back to Flair part of the story by making him out to be a Flair fan. Quick thinking on his (Jesse's) part.

 

Jesse calling Flair Rude was an honest mistake, although I'm surprised that he didn't catch himself right after he said it. Since he didn't, Tony certainly should have.

 

Taylor was useless, as many others have said. The whole point of a wrestler being a guest referee is that they don't take bumps quite as easily as the regular refs. To have him be knocked down right after he gets in the ring the second time is ridiculous to say the least. "For crying out loud" is right. To be slightly fair to him, though, he took the long walk around the ring so he could check on Pee Wee, which I'm guessing is what he was booked to do in that situation.

 

Rude must really have been hurting to have as little offense as we saw. He could barely climb the ropes at all either. That said, what was he doing lifting Fifi so easily if his back was that bad?

 

I liked Tony drawing comparisons between this match and Starrcade '83. This is where he excels: bringing a sense of history into a sport that's ignoring it more and more as time goes on. How many WCW fans at this time even remembered pre-TBS JCP?

 

Flair must have had one hell of a month between Havoc and Starrcade to be taken seriously as Vader's next major challenger. Here, he looks like an aging has-been who can't fairly beat an obviously injured champion who should have been ripe for the picking. I realize that they probably left the belt with Rude so he could tour Europe while Flair stayed stateside to promote Starrcade, but even at that Flair doesn't look now as if he'd give Vader much trouble at all.

 

I agree with El-P about Fifi. She wasn't even trying to get away from Rude as he was carrying her off. We all know that Flair was coming to make the save, but Fifi wasn't supposed to "know" that in the heat of the moment. She should have been taken off of TV when ​A Flair for the Gold ​was discontinued.

[soup23]

Great tights by Rude but man what a sludge of a match by the looks of the clips we saw. Flair doing the Rude Awakening was nice but the finish was really contrived and didn't work on any level.