Larry Matysik's 50 Greatest Professional Wrestlers

[jdw]

My point is that without Hogan the WWE would still be a regional promotion.

 

Frankly, Vince could have gone public in the 80s and early 90s. But it was an ego fuck of owning the whole thing.

[JNLister]

Hogan built the house; Austin turned it into a hugely profitable brothel until it got closed down?

 

The inclusion of Orton to please the publishers/modern fans would be fine if the entire premise of the book and the thrust of a lengthy intro wasn't that WWE produced a top 50 list that was chosen for marketing reasons.

[Jmare007]

Dylan, you think Crockett would have survived without Flair? No Crockett, no Turner buyout, no WCW. Flair kept the NWA title alive and credible for the entire 80s (as a viable alternative to the WWF title). He was the number 2 US draw of the 80s. And there's "no argument"? I have to disagree on that. My view is that the survival of JCP until the Turner buyout is marginally more important to wrestling history than what Austin did (which is "up there" too).

Going by that logic. What Austin did translated on the survival of the WWF and, considering the path wCw was inevitably going, that might be a bigger thing that Flair keeping JCP alive. Unless we are combining both parallel universes so that without Flair = no wCw, so therefore Austin doesn't get to work there, get fired and...Fuck, now I have a headache.

[JerryvonKramer]

I just think building a house edges out maintaining a house or adding an extension to said house.

 

If WWF is the house that Hogan built which Austin kept going / expanded, then WCW was the house that Flair built (albeit an admittedly smaller one) which Hogan (+ NWO + Goldberg) expanded.

 

If Flair hadn't have been there for the Crockett expansion and eventual Turner buyout, then who knows what the number 2 promotion would have been. Maybe AWA would have survived because they'd have kept towns like Chicago. Maybe Watts could have expanded a bit more and survived. Who knows.

 

Point is, Flair was the big differentiator there -- first in terms of establishing Crockett as the number 2 promotion, then in terms of expanding it, and survival. The argument that says otherwise is really selling him very short.

 

I can imagine a WWF without Austin surviving in the mid-90s, I can't imagine Crockett surviving without Flair.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think "building" WCW is really that impressive to be honest

[BrickHithouse]

I can imagine a WWF without Austin surviving in the mid-90s, I can't imagine Crockett surviving without Flair.

I'm totally the opposite. Surviving? Certainly Yes. Exploding? I don't see WWF doing what it did in roughly 96-98 without Austin.

 

For me it trumps Flair in WCW, but overall I would have no problem putting Flair above Austin based on broader criteria.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't think "building" WCW is really that impressive to be honest

I think that's easy to say in hindsight. If that's not impressive, there is nothing at all impressive about ECW, AWA, Mid-South or any other US promotion you care to name not called WWF. It's one of only two wrestling companies ever to go truly national in America and it's not impressive to you?

 

How about some perspective here?

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think "building" WCW is really that impressive to be honest

I think that's easy to say in hindsight. If that's not impressive, there is nothing at all impressive about ECW, AWA, Mid-South or any other US promotion you care to name not called WWF. It's one of only two wrestling companies ever to go truly national in America and it's not impressive to you?

 

How about some perspective here?

 

I agree that we should have perspective, which is precisely why I don't think it's all that impressive.

 

WCW didn't "go" national. It was a company bought out by a television empire. Saying they went national implies something that is not true - i.e. that they were a successful company, that made lots of money and grew and expanded through solid/good/great promotion. That's generally not true and is particularly untrue of the period where Flair was the top star.

 

WCW's ability to expand and grow occurred because of Bischoff (as much as we hate to admit it) and Hogan. Is it possible that Turner never buys from Crockett if Flair isn't part of the package deal? Yes and I think at points we've all heard stories about Turner seeing most of the value in Flair. But WCW was only a profitable company for a blip in time and it's height had little to nothing to do with Flair.

 

I'm not sure how much credit you can really give Flair in a "what if" game like this.

[JerryvonKramer]

I was thinking JCP were national before the buyout and up until 88 they were making money. A few things were badly botched: UWF, the two offices, grip on costs, marketing in general, Dusty's booking, Magnum's injury etc. but Jim Crockett Jr took things national himself.

 

They were making good money in 85, 86, 87. Not Vince money but pretty good, and better than any other promotion. Meltzer goes through it in tedious detail which I'm sure you've read.

 

It's that I'm crediting Flair for -- drawing for a company with completely inept business savvy and zero marketing knowhow. It's everything upto Turner in November 88 rather than after it.

 

88 itself was a disaster for JCP and nothing short of a clusterfuck of mistakes. But Flair's 77-87 from a drawing and promotion growth perspective is as important to that company as Hogan was to Vince.

 

WCW until Bishcoff never made a dime (as WCW 89-96) I'm just saying the infrastructure, what gates they could rely on, the audience -- all that was the house built by Flair. Even if by 92-3 it had been severely eroded and by 96 transformed beyond all recognition into an ersatz WWF.

 

I think Flair's achievements as a draw and promotional lynchpin for JCP (77-87) tend to be buried under the weight of WCW's commercial failure (89-96) and Hogan's incomparable WWF numbers. I don't think he's given a fair shake and what he did, whichever way you look at it, IS really important to wrestling history.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't think Flair is an unimportant historical figure. But he's not Austin when it comes to impact and I think you have to stretch really far into the realm of Harry Turtledove-style alternative theory reconstruction to get to that point.

 

Also while I love Flair he was not the equal to Hogan for Vince in MACW from 77-87. Not even close

[Loss]

There are plenty of positive things to say about Flair as a draw and a star. I don't think anyone would deny that. But yes, this is stretching.

[Dylan Waco]

There are plenty of positive things to say about Flair as a draw and a star.

 

In fact I would go so far as to say that "he built WCW" is pretty much the WORST possible way to sell Flair's historic impact as a star and draw

[JerryvonKramer]

I'm interested by this point.

 

What towns were Mid Atlantic running in 1975? What towns were Crockett running in 1985? What about by 87?

 

There's an argument to say that that's the second biggest expansion wrestling has ever seen. Not only that, Crockett managed to leapfrog the AWA -- and every other promotion -- to become the number 2 US company. Flair was their man when they did this.

 

Is that a "stretch"? Why.

 

Tell me how.

 

I'd love to hear more from Loss and Dylan -- and anyone else -- on this. I don't think it's talked about enough.

[Dylan Waco]

I'm interested by this point.

 

What towns were Mid Atlantic running in 1975? What towns were Crockett running in 1985? What about by 87?

 

There's an argument to say that that's the second biggest expansion wrestling has ever seen. Not only that, Crockett managed to leapfrog the AWA -- and every other promotion -- to become the number 2 US company. Flair was their man when they did this.

 

Is that a "stretch"? Why.

 

Tell me how.

 

I'd love to hear more from Loss and Dylan -- and anyone else -- on this. I don't think it's talked about enough.

 

What two obvious major differences are there between 75 and 85? These are very important differences, to the point where you can't have any serious discussion about wrestling expansion during the period without mentioning them and recognizing what they meant to the general landscape.

[Loss]

I'm interested by this point.

 

What towns were Mid Atlantic running in 1975? What towns were Crockett running in 1985? What about by 87?

 

There's an argument to say that that's the second biggest expansion wrestling has ever seen. Not only that, Crockett managed to leapfrog the AWA -- and every other promotion -- to become the number 2 US company. Flair was their man when they did this.

 

Is that a "stretch"? Why.

 

Tell me how.

 

I'd love to hear more from Loss and Dylan -- and anyone else -- on this. I don't think it's talked about enough.

Flair was a draw in JCP. JCP is not WCW. They are two different promotions and shouldn't be treated as the same thing.

 

Is your argument that Flair drew in JCP? Or is it that he drew in WCW? You most likely won't get any challenge on the first point. It's the second that's the point of contention.

[Dylan Waco]

Is your argument that Flair drew in JCP? Or is it that he drew in WCW? You most likely won't get any challenge on the first point. It's the second that's the point of contention.

This is true, but it goes beyond this when you start talking about expansion because you can't ignore the two obvious things. Flair as the face of a company that was able to run more places is not irrelevant, but it is very easy to inflate it to an absurd degree by ignoring two key changes that occurred between the 75 and 85 dates Jerry pointed to. That's without even going into the problems expansion may have caused for the company (problems FLAIR believed were at the heart of the company shitting the bed, though I wouldn't put much stock in Flair's thoughts on anything related to business/finance).

 

Frankly I think Flair as a real touring champion - which oddly enough ended for the most part after 85 as well - is really a bigger plus in many, many ways than being the face of JCP in 85-88.

[JerryvonKramer]

Loss - I am talking about Flair as a draw for JCP from 77-87 (as outlined above). The point about WCW is that it wouldn't have existed in the form we knew it from 89-96 (or indeed AT ALL) if Flair hadn't been drawing for JCP in that period, if JCP hadn't have been as big as it was by 88, if JCP had died before 88 and so on. I am not treating them as the same thing, far from it, but it is undeniable that one led from the other.

 

Go on then Dylan I'll let you give the punchline to your own question: what two things happened between 75 and 85?

 

Frankly I think Flair as a real touring champion - which oddly enough ended for the most part after 85 as well - is really a bigger plus in many, many ways than being the face of JCP in 85-88.

I think this is another string to his bow, and it's a considerable string for sure. But Flair was the face of JCP during the time he was touring champ as well, there can't be any doubt about that. You make it sound as if 85-88 is the only time we should consider Flair as the lynchpin of the company, that's not strictly true is it.

[Loss]

I see what you are saying now, Jerry, but my concern with that is that it's too subjective. Turner would not have purchased JCP without Flair, yes. Then there would be no WCW. But we don't know what Ted Turner was basing that on. He could have been looking at Georgia Championship Wrestling television ratings in the early 80s when TBS was a fledgling network, or it could have just been something as simple as Ric Flair being the only wrestler under contract to JCP that he recognized. That is an anecdote and without knowing the reasoning behind it, it's hard to put too much stock into it. That doesn't mean it's not a positive for Flair. It just means it's not something I'd really use to emphasize his value. TBS executives also pushed things like the horrid mini-movies to sell PPVs, filling the roster with gimmick guys like Van Hammer, and editing home video releases down to two hours which hurt their merchandising appeal.

 

I will agree that from 1989-1991, and from 1993-1996, Flair was the most over guy in the company. He was also the biggest star they had until 1994 when Hogan showed up. He was the only guy in a headline position for a long period of time who could ever show any positives at the gate or in terms of drawing television ratings, although those were inconsistent and short-lived. There were more misses than hits for him during that time, and he was a guy who could still draw in a hot angle, but not someone who was going to draw just on name. There's nothing wrong with that. It's hardly an insult to him. But most of Flair's success as a draw during that time period is relative to other numbers in WCW at the time - NOT relative to wrestling as a whole.

 

This is going to sound like a backhanded compliment, but the small hardcore audience that followed WCW during that time was *so* emotionally attached to Flair that it was as much a negative as a positive. Any attempts to move on to something else (proven or not, WCW *needed* to experiment on top until they found something that had larger appeal to a bigger audience) were met with so much derision because WCW fans just did not want anyone other than Flair in that top spot. That's not entirely Flair. The ideas for pushing new people on top that they did attempt were pretty lackluster, and if they were going to piss off their base audience, they needed to come up with an alternative so good that they drew in enough fans to make the impact of it negligible. That's the biggest difference between the WWF and WCW during this time -- Vince didn't have anything to bring in a larger audience either, so he tried to appease the core WWF audience until something better came along. And while business dropped for the WWF during this time period, they weren't only alive because they were being propped up by a media company that would keep them alive when they couldn't turn a profit.

 

But anyway, Flair's appeal was pretty much limited to diehards at that point, unless he happened to be in a feud with another big name that captured people and was well-built. His appeal was much more conditional on everything being *just* right than it was in the 1980s.

 

It's hard to get too positive about anything anyone did in WCW during those years, because they just weren't good years. It is impossible to overstate how dysfunctional a wrestling promotion WCW was in its first five years.

[JerryvonKramer]

Loss, the problem with that post though is that it is foregrounding WCW; my argument is foregrounding JCP and what IT achieved. What WCW went on to do with the house that Flair built is neither here nor there in terms of the argument I'm trying to advance.

[Loss]

I don't understand why you keep using JCP to defend his time in WCW. There's a disconnect that I'm just not getting. If WCW is the argument, let's talk about WCW. If JCP is the argument, let's talk about JCP. What am I missing?

[Loss]

I don't understand why you keep using JCP to defend his time in WCW. There's a disconnect that I'm just not getting. If WCW is the argument, let's talk about WCW. If JCP is the argument, let's talk about JCP. What am I missing?

[KrisZ]

People don't want to bring up the dark age of JCP which is post Starrcade 83 to Fall 1984 where the promotion drew some really bad houses in their major cities and JCP was really losing money at the time so enter Dusty Rhodes as booker and he saved the territory. Flair was around but he was touring but even he wasn't drawing as good as he was because after Piper & Valentine split to go along with Steamer's retirement the star power really dropped. If Crockett hadn't brought in Dusty there was no way in hell he would've made the play for TBS.

[jdw]

It's generally thought that WCW wasn't that far from having the plug pulled when they signed Hogan. They'd been losing money ever since Turner bought them, house show business sucked, they weren't strong TV at that time, and at a certain point suits stop wanting to blow money.

 

The House That Flair Built died one time (JCP), was kept alive by a money mark (Ted) while losing millions of dollars a year, and didn't become profitable until Hogan & Eric made it so.

 

Not really that analogous to Hogan and the WWF.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't understand why you keep using JCP to defend his time in WCW. There's a disconnect that I'm just not getting. If WCW is the argument, let's talk about WCW. If JCP is the argument, let's talk about JCP. What am I missing?

I'm not and haven't been at all discussing his time in WCW. I'm was saying there wouldn't have been a WCW without a Flair-led JCP.

 

Maybe KrisZ and jdw can bring some numbers to bear on thus though, we're getting some real counter arguments on Flair-as-JCP lynchpin. I'm very interested in them.

[Matt D]

Can we blame Flair for Crockett's shitty business decisions?