Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes (12/21/85)

[El Boricua]

Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes (12/21/85)

[elliott]

I love Dusty so I was excited to see this on the match list. This starts with your typical dusty punching, dancing, and strutting around stuff. Audio is weird. It sounds like the commentators are announcing to the whole arena.–Ric takes over with an eye poke and we get some chops, the knee drop and cheating like pulling Dusty down by the hair while in an arm bar etc. Flair “works” the armbar by grabbing the ropes occasionally but not much else. Dusty fights back with the elbows and takes Flair out with a great lariat. Flair fights back from Dusty in control by targeting the leg with stomps and a kneedrop setting up the figure 4. Of course Dusty manages to fight back and reverse it. Dusty hits a great headbutt and goes right into some wonderful weeble wobble selling but maintains his balance and command of the match. Dusty even takes Flair apart with Flair’s own chops. The timing on Dusty’s punches is pretty incredible at points here. Flair ends up shoving the ref down so he can get DQ’d as Dusty continues to beat the shit out of him. I’m a big Dusty fan and its 80s Flair so this was fun but more of a decent match than anything else and I think Dusty outworked Flair in this pretty clearly.

[KB8]

I'll level with you, I really did not give a shit about this. I like Dusty and I enjoyed Flair in his other two matches on the disc (the Gilbert studio match is legit my working #1 through the first disc), but this did nothing for me and I lost interest pretty quick. Dusty was at least fun with his mannerisms and big wind-up elbows, and there was one bit where Flair picked up a piece of thrown trash and jabbed Dusty in the face with it (that was actually fucking awesome, tbf), but nothing else grabbed me. Ah, well.

[WingedEagle]

This is a a few weeks after Starrcade. I'm a huge fan of Flair, Dusty and Flair vs. Dusty -- I think their Starrcade '85 match is a legit MOTYC and at a minimum always enjoy them working together. This was no exception, but definitely not higher end Flair/Dusty. The shine with Dusty throwing punches and elbows while hopping around and talking trash is great. Always. Textbook Flair with some solid work on the leg to set up the figure-four, and Dusty was always great at selling this. Really poor finish holds this back but it was a lot of fun to see them do their thing in a different setting for a pretty hot crowd.

 

***1/4

[Migs]

This just felt like Flair-Dusty, with the new setting adding something visually but not really changing much about the actual match. ***