[1987-10-03-NWA-Worldwide] Ric Flair vs Ron Garvin (Cage)

[paul sosnowski]

Ric Flair defends the NWA World Title in a steel cage.  Talk about it here.  

 

[Superstar Sleeze]

NWA World Heavyweight Champion Ric Flair vs Ronnie Garvin - JCP 9/25/87 Steel Cage Match

Flair vs Garvin is always a flesh on flesh, man on man firefight. However, unlike most of their other matches together, they go long in this match. It is a steel cage match where the cage plays a factor more in Flair's strategy. Flair loves to powder to both regroup and to break his opponent's rhythm. He also loves to hurl his opponent out the ring where his opponent will take a bad bump and where he can slam his opponent into hard metal objects. David Crockett does a great job pointing this out that Flair is being forced to face Garvin. Flair loses a criss cross eating a hiptoss, but cant powder. He goes for a top wristlock he lets out a couple Woos but ultimately ends up on his back. He makes back on his feet and chops Garvin but Ronnie immediately responds with his own stiff chop. That dominates the next bit where Garvin uses his chop to repel any Flair offense. We see Flair eat hiptoss, back drops or bump off the chops. Flair tries to use the corner to position the ref so that he can sneak in a knee. The only other time to cage comes to play in the first half is Flair wants to use this advantage to  slam Garvin's head into the cage, but instead Garvin blocks and chops his way out of problems. That is what would dominate this portion. Garvin would use a hold such as the front facelock to control Flair and whenever Flair looked poised to comeback Garvin would chop his away out of trouble. One good spot was Flair suplexed while in the front facelock and Garvin tenaciously hung on. Flair finally gained an advantage on a criss cross scoring a reverse elbow. This is one of Flair's favorite strategies use the criss cross to create an opportunity to take over. Garvin deviated away from his hold and chop strategy. Flair started working on the left arm. It was chop, chop, chop and work on the left arm. Some really good hammerlocks and wristlocks using the ropes of course. Garvin used his dominant hand to break the wristlock, but it was badly injured. He tried his best to keep his left away from Flair by going to an Unorthodox stance, but Flair was able to regain control with the chop. Flair hit the first kneedrop. Then on the second Garvin caught it and transitioned into a figure-4 and then a single leg crab before Flair made the ropes. At the halfway point, I really liked the match thus far. Garvin did a great job selling the left arm. They established Garvin's chop like it is Misawa's elbow. They also established that Flair cant use the outside anymore to his advantage: both to powder and to throw his opponent into hard, metal objects. I have seen this match before and I have the same complaint that I did before and that it is a bit low energy for me. They are working hard, but the front facelock can only be so interesting. Lets see how the second half shakes out. 

The last half is pretty much every Ric Flair trick thrown at you in relentless fashion so if you love Flair you will love it. Garvin comes out swinging after the half crab and it looks like Flair is overwhelmed. He grabs a kneecrusher and applies a figure-4. Garvin escapes, but Flair gets another kneecrusher. On the third, Garvin blocks and KOs Flair with the Hands of Stone, but his leg is so messed up he cant capitalize. Flair comes up desperate and goes for the sleeper. When Garvin escapes that, Flair tries to throw Garvin into the cage, but he ends up going into the cage and he is bloodied. Flair tries to escape but Garvin bounces his head off the top of the cage. Garvin gets a top rope crossbody for two. We see the two versions of the backslide by Garvin that Flair loved to use in his matches. What makes Flair so good in my opinion is so he reacts to getting his ass kicked. It is so quick and swift. He is always in fight or flight mode. There is no in between. Yes he will holler, but it always quick. He is going to roar back and run away. You see both sides as I said he tried to escape the cage. The other is he will just start ripping into Garvin with chops only to get his ass kicked. One of my favorite Flair spots that is very underrated is the inverted atomic drop coming out from the turnbuckles spot. When he does right, it happens so sudden that it is electric. On the second time, Garvin blocks and knocks Flair back down with a punch. Garvin Stomp! Great sell by Flair! This is Flairism in excelsis! Even the most ardent Flair fan as myself, can find this hard to process all at once. Flair true to form tries to escape from Garvin desperately. He rakes the eyes, but Garvin recovers quick enough to press slam Flair off the top. Garvin hits a suplex and then an elbow drop. Flair is so good at selling. This is such a Flair performance he throws out a short kick to the midsection and starts laying in the chops. Garvin starts flying back with the chops and Flair wants to escape. He flips so quickly between fight and flight that's an incredible. His mind is always thinking. Garvin bounces his head off the cage and Flair falls on the top rope nuts first. Sunset flip from the top 1-2-3! The Most Unlikely World Champion of All Time! 

The second half is just so ridiculously over the top Flair that it is beautiful. I feel like this match defies rating. The first half is basic fundamentals executed really well. The second half is Flairism in all its CHAOTIC glory. Flair is such an instinctual wrestler this really benefits his matches feeling organic. The second half is chaos as Flair vacillating between fight and flight in the matter of microseconds. We think of the world in black and white so often. Certain people are brave. Certain people are cowards. That is not true. People struggle everyday between these survival mechanisms. Flair captures the desperation for survival better than anyone else.  It is all so human. Ric Flair is the most human human who ever humaned. Lets call it ****1/2 I need to digest all this. I feel like I need to re-watch all Ric Flair over again but using this new "fight or flight" lens.  

 

[Matt D]

I've been going back through 87 JCP TV as it's on youtube (when I write this, of course), and I needed to watch something in the background while I was doing some work and the squash match/promos/angles format of JCP studio TV works very well. It cuts out in the middle of July and while I'm sure I could keep going with it through other means, it's easier to just move on to something else. I'm going through the July Bash matches on the side but I thought I'd hit this too since I've seen most of Ronnie's year.

The most interesting moment in the match to me is when Ron misses an elbow drop midway through and sells the arm big, because Flair had targeted it for his primary offensive advantage through the match so far. It's an obvious transition moment. It's also paid off much later with in that "flight" phase with Flair moving out of the way but Garvin moving with him and hitting one after the roll. Here, though, Ron obviously sells it and, I think, is expecting Flair to go back to it, but he uses the opening to go for the leg, starting the shin breakers and a figure-four. And I wonder why he did this. There are thoughts that come to mind.

Familiarity: It's what Flair goes to. It what he's comfortable with. Both the man and the kayfabe wrestler. It's how he builds the back half of his matches.

Arrogance: Garvin had gone for the figure four himself earlier in the match and there's a level of affrontry to that. This match also builds from the last big Flair singles cage match, in July, when he beat Jimmy Garvin after his leg gave out on a leapfrog. He wanted to beat Garvin the same way.

Lack of imagination: Flair could have created a different sort of narrative and he chose not to.

In the match, it worked. It worked because Garvin was set to win, I think, and because of that, he was able to survive the Figure-Four and had an amazing Hands-of-Steel counter for one shin-breaker too many, which was another turning point. You can absolutely read into this that Flair's arrogance combined with Garvin's ruggedness is his undoing, all because he didn't follow up on the arm, which is actually a feeling I don't get from a lot of other Flair matches where he shifts gears to the leg mid-match. Maybe you needed all of those earlier matches to make this match work so well, but I don't think that's entirely the case or that it excuses the other matches as much. That doesn't mean that the train of thought might not be effective, but I'd argue that because the announcers never bring it to the forefront and because I imagine the fans weren't necessarily thinking about it on that level, especially as they didn't have the luxury to rewatch matches, it's sort of a bridge too far.

Within this one specific match, however, it absolutely worked. Why? Because it built so tightly off of the very similar match two months prior and here, he got his comeuppance for it.