[1992-07-25-WWF-Superstars] Randy Savage, Ric Flair, Mr Perfect & Ultimate Warrior

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

I really thought this was a great segment. The Savage/Warrior dueling stuff is really good, so is Flair's promo bitching about being left out. Flair and Perfect troll Savage into a fight, then start doing a number on him. Warrior makes the save, then the two have words and have to be separated. Nice piece of business.

[Tim Evans]

Macho was just awesome in this and nice to see usual Ric Flair come back. Loved Savage running to the ring and almost taking the camera man down.

[El-P]

Great great segment. WWF was so fun in 92.

[shoe]

This was a really strong segment. I loved how Savage grabbed Warrior by cheeks. It's such a disrespectful move.

[Kevin Ridge]

Seeing Warrior and Savage go back and forth on the mic was fun. Flair easily gets Savage to come to the ring where he gets beat down by Flair and Perfect. Warrior makes the save. Too bad Perfect couldn't get more physical.

[WingedEagle]

Great presence from both Savage & Warrior here, even if one of them was spewing some mindless nonsense. This feels like a huge match but Warrior's speaking doesn't help much. Flair & Perfect are out to say that Flair's better than both and then Perfect delivers a dumb impersonation of Savage, who attacks and is jumped by Perfect. Warrior saves and picks up the belt, and they're eventually broken up by officials. Pretty long angle for Superstars and definitely seemed effective in building the PPV.

[PeteF3]

Good segment marred by terrible video quality. Flair points out, "I've been beating up people in facepaint for my whole career!" Flair getting physical in a suit and Perfect using his belt lend a southern vibe to this, which was nice to see. Officials quickly break up a near-fight between Warrior and Savage--where were they when Savage was going after Flair?

[garretta]

The first part was a nice little verbal faceoff between Warrior and Savage, their first since Mania VII. The history between them wasn't exactly glossed over, but it wasn't explored in depth either, mostly because they wanted to keep both of them babyfaces and not bring up Randy's heel past. Of course, not being able to openly talk about their previous feud outside of a few passing references didn't leave much for them to do except out-weird each other, which is why Flair and Curt were needed.

 

I can see where the whole "whose side is Flair on?" stuff started, because it looked like Warrior knew that Flair and Curt were coming to the ring. Notice how he got Mean Gene out of harm's way before they even appeared, and also notice how Savage was their main target, with Warrior only an afterthought. Randy apparently thought this way as well, which is part of what led to the pull-apart between him and Warrior. It's a standard part of the buildup for WWF face vs. face matches, but it usually happens a little later than five weeks before the card.

 

I loved Flair referring to his past of beating up guys with facepaint, and Curt's imitation of Randy was awful and hilarious at the same time. Flair's all the way back to his Crockett self, and Curt isn't exactly a better manager than JJ Dillon, but he's more effective in a "partner in crime" kind of way, as you see by his assistance in the attack on Savage. He's apparently not cleared to take any physical contact, though, as Warrior knocks Flair for a loop but Curt bails before he can be touched.

 

I can understand wanting to run Warrior-Savage as a comparatively fresh main event (or semi-main, if you consider Bret-Davey Boy the real main event) at Wembley, but leaving Flair off the card completely as a wrestler was inexcusable. Do you mean to tell me that there was no one on the roster that he couldn't have gone over to keep himself strong? They couldn't even bring Piper out of retirement (he made an appearance on the card, but didn't wrestle) or bring Bob Backlund in a little early? I find that extremely hard to believe. I've never seen the card, but his appearance in the title match had better be something truly memorable to justify flying him all the way over to England and not letting him wrestle, even if he got a full payoff anyway (which I hope he did).

 

The video quality on this was so bad that the audio was affected in several places as well. Wasn't at least some of the buildup on home video in better quality than what we saw here, and if so, why wasn't it used for as much of this segment as possible?

[PeteF3]

Would it do Flair any good to go over El Matador in a throwaway match? It would be too early to be jobbing Backlund out even if he were available, and Boss Man had to be kept protected for Nailz...unless you want to do a schmozz finish, which again, doesn't do Flair any good.

 

It's not just you--the Between the Sheets guys lamented Flair's lack of a match on the card too. And yes, of course, Flair wrestling is generally better than Flair not wrestling. But complaining about him not being on the card doesn't accomplish anything if someone can't provide a legitimate solution.

 

Five years from now there would be an obvious answer, but in 1992 no one knew what a triple threat match was.

 

Maybe what Flair needed was for this card to be held in Landover with Bret-Shawn in a ladder match, as was an alternate plan. Then you could run Flair-Davey Boy which would be a decent match-up for him.

[garretta]

If Curt had been able to wrestle, the obvious match would have been Savage/Warrior vs. Flair/Perfect, but he wasn't. The only face singles wrestler that I can think of for Flair to go against would be Duggan, and that wasn't much of a match by this point.

 

I'll have to see how the hype shakes out before I can really answer the question of what else I'd do with Flair; as it stands now, it just may be that Vince did the only thing he could possibly do, as unappealing as it might have been for some of us.

[dawho5]

Good set-up for the babyface vs. babyface match to come.  Flair and Savage in particular were spectacular here.