LogFAQs > #943281572

Maniac is having internet issues and considering how long it's taken to get here I figured I'd post this one

#6 (tie): Ric Flair
Total Score:233
# of lists: 15
Highest Ranking: 2nd, Jakyl

Writeup: Bidoof

The hardest part about doing a write-up for Ric Flair is to find something about the man and his 40 year career that hasnt been said by everyone else. Every wrestling fan knows that he is officially a 16-time world champion (Flair maintains that his actual count is 21), every fan knows about his lengthy tenure as the top guy of the NWA, many can quote his promos word for word, and many still consider his matches with other greats like Ricky Steamboat to still be among the greatest matches in wrestling despite the bar for greatness having only gone up since. If you were to ask your average wrestling fan (and even people who work in the industry) who is the greatest wrestler of all-time, people still answer Ric Flair without hesitation. The fact that this still continues to be the answer to many (including myself) years after Flairs retirement and decades removed from his peak speaks to how much Ric continues to influence the industry. Ric Flair is still the standard that everyone measures greatness against in this sport and I dont see that changing.
Trained by Verne Gagne and starting out in the AWA, Ric worked with a wide variety of the territorial greats early in his career but Ric himself was rather unremarkable. If you can hunt down these early matches of Rics on the Internet, youll be surprised that this doughy, near-300 lb. brunette would go on to become the lean, platinum blonde multi-time champion. It actually wasnt until the infamous plane crash in 1976 where Ric began his transformation into The Man. With his back broken in three places, doctors didnt believe that Ric would ever wrestle again. But Ric was determined to find a way to keep his wrestling career alive and, in just eight months, he returned to the ring with a very different style of work. Over time, he began to adopt the looks and mannerisms of Buddy Rogers and, by the end of the 70s, Ric was in full Nature Boy mode. Its fascinating to think that an incident that very well should have ended his career as a professional wrestler is what led to him eventually becoming one of the greatest in history.
On September 17, 1981, Ric became the NWA World Heavyweight Champion for the first time and he would go on to hold this title for a total of 2,687 days throughout the decade. Thats roughly 75% of a decade where Ric Flair is the world champion. What makes this even more remarkable than the reigns of Bruno Sammartino or even Hulk Hogan is that Flair was a world champion for more than just a promotion. He traveled throughout the territories, even going international at times, to be THE world champion of every promotion that worked within the NWA system. Flairs world title reigns were a vital part to that system as he was counted on to make the stars of individual territories look good and he did that in spades. Whether it was giving some regional guy the greatest match of his career or making new national stars in Ricky Steamboat or Sting (who was made player in the NWA world title scene in one night), Ric had the ability to make anyone look like they could be a contender without ever sacrificing his credibility. It speaks even more to how impressive Ric Flair was as world champion when one considers all the talent that was out there. Dusty Rhodes, Harley Race, Ted DiBiase, Terry Funk, Junkyard Dog, the Von Erichs Flair was such a tremendous world champion that not only was he chosen above these men but a couple of them would serve as transitional champs to the next great Flair reign.
Admittedly, from the 90s on, Flairs career is something of a mixed bag. While he still had classic matches with the likes of Sting, Vader, and Randy Savage, Flair found himself on the losing side of many internal political struggles. In the early 90s, he had to contend with WCWs poor management believing Flair was done as a main event attraction (despite fans rabidly chanting WE WANT FLAIR at every WCW event once he left to WWF). In the mid-90s to the death of WCW, he had to struggle with Bischoff and Hogan using him as a set-up guy for themselves and their friends. Despite the efforts to devalue Flair and Flairs own loss of confidence, he still had his incredible promo skills. Flairs microphone skills are on another level from just about every wrestler ever and, through that, he remained one of the few wrestlers in WCW people cared about. Like with just about every other facet of his career, what is there to even say about Ric Flairs promos that you dont already know? Just go watch any of the hundreds of compilations on YouTube or, hell, go watch his performance on the last episode of Raw where he was one of the only people who felt genuine in the most stifling, over-produced environment ever. No matter what he says or does, Flair has the important ability to make you care about him.
I have to be honest, this is Ric Flair were talking about. Hes in every professional wrestling Hall of Fame of any repute. He has more quotable promos than any other wrestler in the business. He was the centerpiece of wrestlings greatest stable ever in the Four Horsemen. He was considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all-time before I was even born and hes still winning over new fans who see his work almost a decade after his retirement. If this write-up is a rambling mess, its because this task is near-impossible without writing an actual novel. Ric Flair is so ingrained as perhaps the greatest wrestler of all time that Dave Meltzers Wrestler of the Year award, the award that goes to the wrestler that excels in every quality that makes a great wrestler, is still called the Ric Flair Award. What Im desperately trying to get at it something I said from the beginning its impossible to say anything new or meaningful about how Ric Flair is one of the greatest of all-time. If I had submitted a list for this, I would have started with him and worked from there. Ric is still the gold standard of what it means to be The Man and, to me, maybe he still is. While I believe hes been equaled, I struggle to say that hes ever been surpassed.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2nmd6j; Ric Flair vs. Jumbo Tsuruta, 2 Out of 3 Falls (AJPW Grand Champion Carnival II, June 8 1983)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wnF8XNLYTa8; Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat (NWA Clash of the Champions, April 2 1989)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5hx3ab; The 1992 Royal Rumble
https://www.bilibili.com/video/av15050412/; Ric Flair vs. Vader (WCW Starrcade '93, December 27 1993)
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x17zeqq; Ric Flair vs. Edge, TLC (WWE Raw, January 16 2006)

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