Ric Flair Wrestling As A Babyface

[Blackjack]

I found an old VHS tape with wrestling from 1983 on it and Flair was a face at the time. He was chasing The NWA Heavyweight Title which was held by Harley Race, who had a $25,000 bounty on Flair at the time, and they had a Flair vs. Race match right on TV! It's the one where Bob Orton Jr. and Dick Slater run in and try to collect the bounty on Flair by piledriving him and then double teaming him. Flair gets taken out on a stretcher!

It's a good match and was before Flair's matches were all mostly the same match. In this match with Race, Flair doesn't rely on the things we've all seen a thousand times like getting down on his knees, begging his opponent to stop (as if that would work) and then giving his opponent a low blow and all the other things he did far too often. He had more of a variety of moves. His matches as a face were more interesting.. My favorite match was Flair as a face vs. Terry Funk in 1989 in their I Quit match from the Clash Of Champions with Gordon Solie and Jim Ross calling the action.

 

[ThunderL1ps]

A lot of his good face and heel material dating back to the late 70's-early 80's hasn't be preserved all that well. There is some good stuff to be found on Youtube. I vaguely remember some of the face stuff as a kid watching Maple Leaf Wrestling back in the day, when Flair would work Toronto territory and we'd get some Mid-Atlantic footage. I live in Brantford now where they used to do the TV tapings for the NWA and later the WWF. I didn't live here until about 16 years ago, otherwise I'd have seen my fair share live.

That whole run of Flair's leading up to Flair For The Gold at the first Starcade was pretty entertaining. A lot of fans liked Flair being with the Four Horsemen, but in a lot of ways it took away from Flair by being in a faction

. He was a pretty good baby face and doesn't get enough credit for it. The feud with Vader and the stuff with Roddy Piper in the early 80's being among his best stuff, along with the Race fued.

 

[Blackjack]

A lot of his good face and heel material dating back to the late 70's-early 80's hasn't be preserved all that well. There is some good stuff to be found on Youtube. I vaguely remember some of the face stuff as a kid watching Maple Leaf Wrestling back in the day, when Flair would work Toronto territory and we'd get some Mid-Atlantic footage. I live in Brantford now where they used to do the TV tapings for the NWA and later the WWF. I didn't live here until about 16 years ago, otherwise I'd have seen my fair share live.

That whole run of Flair's leading up to Flair For The Gold at the first Starcade was pretty entertaining. A lot of fans liked Flair being with the Four Horsemen, but in a lot of ways it took away from Flair by being in a faction

. He was a pretty good baby face and doesn't get enough credit for it. The feud with Vader and the stuff with Roddy Piper in the early 80's being among his best stuff, along with the Race fued.

A lot of what made the matches where Ric was a face was that he didn't do the same thing in every match; he wasn't repetitive, which he later would be as a heel. Why would he be more creative working as a face? I wondered about this for a while and then I realized the answer was right in front of me when I watched his matches with Harley Race and Terry Funk. The heel always called the match! With somebody else calling the match Flair wasn't repetitive like he was when he was the heel and therefore calling the match. Did you see the Flair-Funk feud from 1989?