Ric Flair

[JerryvonKramer]

Also, I think for ANYONE who listened to that Flair vs. Lawler vs. Funk debate Dylan and Dave did with Loss and Will a few years back, the idea of those three as GOAT candidates is permanently ingrained in the imagination. At least it has been for me. (Although I think it probably did more for Funk and Lawler than for Flair, who I think probably is always already de facto in that discussion).

[Dylan Waco]

I think Flair has as good a chance as anyone to finish 1. I would be fairly shocked if he finished lower than 5 or 6.

 

On my ballot I could see him as high as 1 or as low as 20 but that's really pushing it on the low end. I suspect a lot of people are in the same camp as me.

[Childs]

 

 

I suspect that he'll be a lock for top 5, and probably even top 3. And most of what you see is a vocal minority.

I don't want to start this insanely circular and terrible argument again, but didn't Flair finish 7th in the 2006 SC poll? Do you really feel as though he will climb multiple spots? If anything, we don't really have any new jaw dropping footage and his work after 06 was actively bad. I think it's reasonable to assume he might fall slightly, although he still seems like a lock for the top 10.

Flair finished below Benoit, Liger and Eddie in 2006. That ain't happening again. So even if a few others leapfrog him, hard to see him not at least holding serve.

 

I could also see him jumping Kobashi, Jumbo and/or Kawada, all of whom have faced their own little spurts of critical backlash.

[Gregor]

I don't want to start this insanely circular and terrible argument again, but didn't Flair finish 7th in the 2006 SC poll? Do you really feel as though he will climb multiple spots? If anything, we don't really have any new jaw dropping footage and his work after 06 was actively bad. I think it's reasonable to assume he might fall slightly, although he still seems like a lock for the top 10.

According to this post, he finished eighth. I don't think that Benoit and Guerrero will finish ahead of him again. Liger seems like someone who will fall, too. On the other hand, Hansen and Funk seem like guys who might move past him. I don't see even the most highly rated guys from Mexico (Casas and Satanico, probably) jumping him, just because there are enough people who aren't interested in their style of wrestling. I'm not sure if Lawler's in that boat or in the one with Hansen and Funk. Mysterio over Flair feels like a long shot but it could happen.

 

I didn't post there, though, so I don't have the best idea of how the voters there compared to those here.

 

Edit: Childs posted almost exactly same thing before I did, which at least makes me feel better about my generalizations about the electorate.

[JerryvonKramer]

I mean, honestly, I think the big casuality from the 2006 list will be Jumbo. That's what all the early indications suggest.

 

If I was a bookmaker, I'd probably make Stan Hansen the favourite for #1 because, apart from Matt, there hasn't really be anyone who has batted against him.

[Dylan Waco]

To me the race for overall number 1 is probably a two person race between Hansen and Flair. I think too many people will leave off all luchadors for a Casas or Satanico to have a chance. Japan there is too much of a split in thinking for one consensus guy to break out. Maybe Tenryu has an outside shot, but even that feels wrong. Terry Funk might have the next best chance after Hansen and Flair. Of course it's all guess work at this point, and depends on who actually turns in ballots.

[JerryvonKramer]

There is some epic cross-posting and mind-melding going on here

[Death From Above]

I think Tenryu is in many ways a better Lawler comparable than Flair. Guys that can finish in the top 20 but require a very circumvented argument to make #1 sound realistic.

[Childs]

I mean, honestly, I think the big casuality from the 2006 list will be Jumbo. That's what all the early indications suggest.

 

If I was a bookmaker, I'd probably make Stan Hansen the favourite for #1 because, apart from Matt, there hasn't really be anyone who has batted against him.

Bigger than Benoit, Eddie, Harley Race, Bret, Dynamite? I'd be surprised.

[Dylan Waco]

I will say there is a possibility that Daniel Bryan could be GWE 2.0's version of Benoit or Eddie, or maybe even a fusion of both. I expect he will appear on nearly every ballot, and I think he has a very good chance to be upper third on almost every ballot he's on. If he finished that strongly he could edge out a Flair, particularly in a weighted voting system if Flair ends up being a 10-20 guy on a lot of ballots and Bryan ends up being a 5-15 guy. Will be interesting to see.

[JerryvonKramer]

Another guy who I've not seen hardly any bat "against" is Terry Funk, although Will did once tell me he's got him at 24, and not someone he sees as top tier, which I imagine to be the low vote.

 

 

I mean, honestly, I think the big casuality from the 2006 list will be Jumbo. That's what all the early indications suggest.

 

If I was a bookmaker, I'd probably make Stan Hansen the favourite for #1 because, apart from Matt, there hasn't really be anyone who has batted against him.

Bigger than Benoit, Eddie, Harley Race, Bret, Dynamite? I'd be surprised.

 

Maybe I'm reading too much into that 80s poll, but him having 0 votes seemed quite ominous.

 

We'll see. Benoit, DK and Race for sure will drop like stones. Harley probably much too unfairly, but then his 2006 placement was absurdly high too.

 

Not many seem to feel the Jumbo love, and when there's an absense of that positive feeling, I wonder how low he could drop. I think "positive feeling" goes a long way.

 

I also think Bret and Eddie will quietly have their fans. The Canadians will find ways to slip Bret into their top 10. And I see Eddie being big with the more modern crowd.

[Microstatistics]

If I was a bookmaker, I'd probably make Stan Hansen the favourite for #1 because, apart from Matt, there hasn't really be anyone who has batted against him.

Hansen is not gonna make my ballot.

[soup23]

 

If I was a bookmaker, I'd probably make Stan Hansen the favourite for #1 because, apart from Matt, there hasn't really be anyone who has batted against him.

Hansen is not gonna make my ballot.

 

 

Is Flair?

[funkdoc]

the thing with Flair is that the people who are "down" on him will still have him in their top 10-20 probably. that's higher than Matt's vote on Hansen...

 

i say naitch takes this one

[ohtani's jacket]

 

 

I suspect that he'll be a lock for top 5, and probably even top 3. And most of what you see is a vocal minority.

I don't want to start this insanely circular and terrible argument again, but didn't Flair finish 7th in the 2006 SC poll? Do you really feel as though he will climb multiple spots? If anything, we don't really have any new jaw dropping footage and his work after 06 was actively bad. I think it's reasonable to assume he might fall slightly, although he still seems like a lock for the top 10.

 

Nah, Flair was still on TV in 2006 and him not retiring was one of those perrenial smark axes to grind.

 

Also, the DVDR 80s projects happened in those 10 years which reminded everyone who took part in them why Flair was so highly thought of in the first place. I think many of us -- here on PWO -- sat down and watched and re-watched more footage than happened in 2006. And with that footage watching, as Will says, the cream will rise. And Flair has consistently been in highly ranked matches from basically every set.

 

As far as I recall, nobody had an ax to grind with Flair in 2006 for not retiring. The criticisms of Flair in 2006 were the same ones you've heard before. I don't think the dial has moved at all on Flair in the past ten years. As for footage watching, there was a shorter polling period for the Smarkschoice poll. Folks shared matches digitally, but there wasn't a lot of time to explore stuff. Most of the viewers were heavy watchers though and had been for a long time. That was back in the days where there were more match reviewers and more websites trying to be like DVDVR. There was a lot of stuff watched in the five year lead-up to the poll when many of the participants came online. There were some things in that poll that new. The idea that peak period AAA wasn't the be all and end all of 90s lucha was new at that time. Stuff like Memphis wasn't as appreciated as it is today or Portland or AWA. 80s New Japan wasn't that popular. But everyone who was involved as a big fan.

[Loss]

It was weeks into the project before Flair even came up for discussion that time around, and it took a lot of pushing from yours truly to get people to even really consider him. People were not excited about him at all. JDW and Frank were the first people to ever really criticize him, and people took that and ran with it even farther than they did. It really was common at that point for those participating in the voting to consider Benoit and Eddy better than him, and the final results bore that out.

[Microstatistics]

 

 

If I was a bookmaker, I'd probably make Stan Hansen the favourite for #1 because, apart from Matt, there hasn't really be anyone who has batted against him.

Hansen is not gonna make my ballot.

 

 

Is Flair?

 

He is but he will be much lower than where most people will have him.

[Matt D]

 

I tend to like Flair the tag wrestler, but this is a fun look at something we don't often get to see from 78. It's just a few clips and we don't get a shot at Flair vs Andre, but I really appreciate how he's working the crowd on the apron and at one point he gets on the house mic to mock Mulligan to give Andre an excuse to come chase him which felt notable.

[JerryvonKramer]

I don't really care which way people vote at all, like in no single way. If I've convinced you to vote Bryan, whatever knock yourself out.

 

I'm just noting why I think what I think. Nothing more, nothing less. To me, there's something almost mythical about the career Flair had. So improbable, so unlikely. So many contingencies that could have derailed it. And yet there it is, a guy who worked with them ALL: anyone who was anyone in four decades of wrestling history. If that means nothing to you or if Bryan working the index of 00s indies guys means more to you, that's cool with me. I'm just articulating why I treasure the Flair career more.

Just want to elaborate on this a little bit.

 

Ric's career could have ended in 1975, we all know that.

 

It could have ended really at any point. A bad bump. A piledriver gone wrong. A knee from Brody in the head. Look at how Bryan's career ended. Or Bret's. Or more tragically look at how Misawa's ended.

 

A lot of things can derail a guy's career. Injuries, politics, bad booking.

 

The idea of "right guy, right time" doesn't tell the full story.

 

Flair didn't always have political backing. The NWA was a complete minefeild in the early 80s. In the mid-80s, he had Dusty to contend with in JCP. He could have been completely done in 1990 from political decisions when Jim Herd got him to cut his hair and booked him as a Black Scorpion. He could have been done in 1995 after Hogan had basically squashed and retired him and taken over his home turf. He could have been done in 1997-8 when Eric Bischoff told him to go home.

 

You can call it luck, determination, desparation, ego, a mixture of all of these things and more, but he kept going through it all. And he got that special retirement show on Raw.

 

Wrestling is a tough and ruthless business. There are *reasons* why I think the Flair career is something really remarkable. And there are reasons why no one else had it.

 

I have 3-4 days to go on this project before I'll be done. We won't have these debates again for a long time. But I do want to get over, somehow, the sense of why I think the way I do about Flair.

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd like someone who is an advocate of "working smart" to comment on this bit of analysis of the Flair flip as him actually "working smart" because it gives him multiple transitional options as a worker:

 

Flair flip. Bails to the outside. One thing people don't talk about enough with the Flair flip is how many options it gives Ric. This match is boring the shit out of me so let me go into those options:

 

Option 1: run over to the next turnbuckle for another move from top (which can connect or he can be slammed off)

 

Option 2: run on the apron and drop down to outside and bail.

 

Option 3: just the big bump over the turnbuckle to the outside

 

Option 4: eat a clothesline running across apron

 

It's not just a spot that pops the crowd, it's one that presents options for him as a worker and which gives you a lot of neat transitions.

I see that spot brought up a lot as a way of knocking Ric.

[Matt D]

If you told him that, he'd go "hey, that's a good thought. You're almost as smart as Conrad. Almost. But not as rich as him. Now come get a drink."

[Dylan Waco]

I think if you are looking to create a narrative for a favorite you can come up with lots of reasons why they repeat certain things. And in many cases there would be truth in that narrative because I think more often than not formula in wrestling is done for the explicit purposes of establishing a framework from which good psychology can spring. That said given the success rate of that Flair spot, and the very small level of variation within it, I think it's very hard to argue it is a piece of strategic brilliance that the crowd is going to grasp and appreciate. Really it's just Flair wanting to give the crowd an expected spot.

[JerryvonKramer]

I guess I'm looking at it less as a piece of kayfabe strategy and more from the point of view of giving him creative options for transitions as a worker.

[Dylan Waco]

I don't see any evidence to support the thesis.

[Jimmy Redman]

I think there's something to be said for the fact that we all feel like we have a good grasp of Flair's philosophy as a worker from what he's said over the years, and so knowing that it's hard to give him the kind of...benefit of the doubt when it comes to thought process and motives.

 

Like, when we evaluate someone else and see some sort of deep psychological thread or "smart" work in their matches, we generally feel comfortable attributing it to the worker as something they've orchestrated. But really, we usually don't know exactly what they were thinking when they were working, and they could have deliberately done it just as easily as they could have been winging it and trying to pop the crowd. But we give them the benefit of the doubt because we see it as smart work, so we'd like to credit them for it to make a case for them.

 

With Flair, we know from the man himself that his approach was to get his shit in and pop the crowd, so it's harder to attribute some kind of deep thought to his moves in a match. He gets no benefit of the doubt because we know better.

 

Like, if Kofi Kingston had done numerous interviews saying that he only did shit to pop the crowd and get his shit in and wasn't thinking deeply about building each match from the next and what not, and everybody knew this about him, I would find it a lot harder to argue for him doing that in his thread. Or if I did, it would be in a "lucky he stumbled onto this multi-match arc" way. Or you'd maybe attribute it to his opponent. But it's hard to give him that credit if you've heard from the horse's mouth that he wasn't trying to be smart at all.

 

I think people react to Ric that way now. If we had never heard a peep about his working approach from him, we'd be a lot quicker to give him credit for the smart things that happen in his matches, the same way we are with other workers that we simply don't hear from.