Ric Flair vs. Shawn Michaels
WWF November 12, 1991 Springfield Civic Center Springfield, MA
This little gem comes to us via an episode of WWF Primetime Wrestling and Flair is sporting the same robe he wore in the Tenryu bout. Ric's "Real World Championship" is distorted here as this would be when he was carrying around a WWF tag title due to WCW sending lawyers after Titan for the NWA World Championship. The story there was that Ric Flair hated everything Jim Herd stood for and jumped ship to New York. Citing that he was never paid back a deposit he made involving the belt, Flair had no issues bringing the main title of the NWA over to McMahonLand with him and parading it on television. Obviously, WCW had a minor issue with their bread and butter being on the television of their mortal enemies, so courtroom hilarity ensued. In the end, Flair did the right thing and sent the belt back so the boys down in Atlanta could continue to eat. Shawn runs down still in Rocker-mode, but Jannety is nowhere to be seen.
No one would care past a week if the TNA Champion showed up on RAW, so the only way to compare Flair in WWF with the NWA belt in today's terms would be if John Cena left and formed a new federation with the WWE Championship a la Misawa in 2000.
Feeling out process as both men trade hip tosses and shoulder blocks, ending with Michaels getting caught in the corner. Nature Boy fulfills his quota of making me cringe with the very first chop but misses a blind charge that the future Mr. Wrestlemania turns into a wacky corkscrew sunset flip for two. Flair tries to back Michaels into the buckles again, but this time, it ends up with Ric eating a strong pimpslap, forcing him to bail to the safety of the outside. No joke, all that was missing on that spot was Michaels pouring powder onto his hands. Shawn's tights appear half finished here, as if halfway through the process, he had to tell the seamstress to forget it and go on the hunt for hearts and mirrors instead. Flair collects himself and heads back to the corner to slug it out but Shawn fires up and unloads on him with fistacuffs and neon flying all over creation. Michaels falls for the old Flair beg off, eye-poke combo and back to the corner we go. By now, you'd think Ric has learned his lesson about going blow for blow and sure enough, Michaels wakes up after a few chops and explodes, sending him Flair Flipping to the outside as we take a commercial break. If memory serves me correctly, I had an old Coliseum Video with this exact match unedited as well as an epic Flair-Bret war now that I think about it.
Sadly, this match wasn't the last time HBK sported something half-finished and hideous.
The match returns with Flair countering a sunset flip with a greco roman punch and both men are down. After a sweet Michaels dropkick, Team Flair is noticing a trend here and thus turns the tide when Perfect trips Shawn from the outside, giving Flair the chance to drop his trademark jumping knee to his noggin. Another pillar to post slugfest ends with Michaels charging into a boot, but Ric gets cocky and heads to the top. Before we are given the chance to see The Nature Boy hit Red Arrow decades before Adrian Neville, he is slammed off, effectively killing what could've been a major moment in wrestling history. Michaels hits the superkick a few years before it reached a Level 99 finisher and follows up with a DiBiase style fistdrop off the top. Flair is clotheslined to the outside and Michaels makes a crucial mistake, completely wiping out on a plancha into the guardrails. Michaels looks legally dead and nowhere near making the ten count before Marty Jannetty arrives and hoists him back into the ring. Even though Shawn hasn't moved a muscle, Flair still pins him with his foot on the ropes like a dick at 7:31 shown. That's a true fuckin' heel, folks. Speaking of heels, Shawn is livid when he comes to and pushes away Marty's attempts at explaining himself. A rather strange build to the HBK heel turn when you think about it, because I'd be right steamed at Marty as well.
His reign as Digital Champion is safe for now!
Ric Flair pinned Shawn Michaels (7:31 shown)
VERDICT:
18 years before Shawn Michaels superkicked Ric Flair into retirement (sort of), this was a nice bang-bang-bang affair that foreshadowed things to come. Flair gave Michaels, at the time an unproven youngster in the singles department, a ton of offense and bumped like a superball. That was one of the things that truly made Flair great was his unselfishness in the ring. Say what you will about his backstage shenanigans, but the man was The Man in the ring. Nowhere near as polished as their later meeting in 2003, but well worth checking out for history's sake as this lead into the heel turn of one of the greatest heels to ever lace them up as well as Ric Flair winning his first WWF Championship two months later at the Royal Rumble. A fun seven minutes for sure.
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