[1999-01-04-WCW-Nitro] Interview: Ric Flair

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

WCW has their biggest show in history and draws a record-setting gate. And they fuck up the evening in royal fashion. But we'll get to that in a few segments, as for now, all is well. Ric Flair is the President of WCW and is out to make his first proclamation of sorts. He summons Bischoff to the ring and tells him to come to the ring tomorrow unless he wants to go work somewhere else tomorrow. Flair points out that Bischoff has taken great pride in the last five years in taking him down a few notches and says the easiest thing would be to fire him, but he's going to do better than that. Since he had so much fun removing Flair from main event status, Flair is going to cut his salary in half and make him go back to the announce booth.

 

Next, Flair wants to address Randy Anderson. Bischoff fired him. This is really weird because the imply that he hasn't been refereeing matches all this time and that Flair is just now rehiring him. They show old clips from 1997 - which seems like an eternity ago by the beginning of 1999 - that show Bischoff firing him. So Flair brings him out and rehires him for double the salary. Re-hire me, I'm already re-hired?

 

Finally, Flair thanks everyone who came to the ring last week and supported him and that includes Randy Savage, who showed up for one cameo and doesn't even come back for another three months because WCW can't manage their talent anymore and isn't he an NWO guy anyway? This stuff makes my head hurt. He closes by saying they won't be doing WCW/NWO co-branding anymore and that WCW will present Souled Out. He wants Barry Windham and Curt Hennig in a handicap match, but in a funny moment can't remember what it's called and asks Arn to refresh him on the gimmick name. David Flair steps up and wants to team with Ric. Ric is hesitant but Arn convinces him that he knows what he's doing, which could be an interesting moment but is a bit rushed.

 

We close out looking at Eric at the booth again and he doesn't say a word all night until the show closing angle.

[Tim Evans]

This is very long and they could have gotten to the point faster. Nice to see future NXT champion Charlotte in the ring with the horsemen and Reid. I also laughed at Mongo getting in the cameras way blocking the shot.

[soup23]

I liked this segment from Flair and it killed live as we get him sending Bischoff to the announce booth and set up an intriguing PPV match in a upper mid card role. The stuff with Anderson was weird though.

 

Bischoff in the announce booth is one of the highlights of the night and as much shit as Tony gets for his call about Foley (some deservedly so, he does great here instructing Bischoff how to do this).

[PeteF3]

We had an angle already where PeeWee got rehired--I believe Anderson had to go out again for more cancer treatments, but they act like he's been gone ever since Bischoff fired him. But hey, until I got to the '97 Yearbook I didn't really remember if he came back or not. When I watched this live I was like, "Didn't he come back already? No? Guess not--oh well."

 

Flair books the first match for Souled Out--2 weeks out is a good time to start doing that. David Flair throws his name into the hat for Ric's match. Insert Between the Sheets "dun-dun-DUN" soundbite here.

 

Bischoff goes to the announce booth. He would actually say one sentence at some point in the next 2 and a half hours: "Goldberg's a dead man." In fact, Eric was mostly away from the desk running things backstage and his silent treatment was a cover story.

 

Lots of inadvertent ominous foreshadowing here, but as a standalone it's a fun segment.