This review was commissioned by Wrestling Playlists over on my Ko-fi account.
The inherent attraction of a Ric Flair title reign is that it has to end eventually. The Horsemen can help, he can steal wins by hook or by crook, but time is an inevitability that even Ric Flair can’t escape. In this match, we see Ric Flair towards over a year into his fourth NWA World Heavyweight Championship reign, and this time they’ve put him in a steel cage.
Seeing the date on this commission and having a very rough idea of what 80s wrestling history looked like, I had my suspicions about what this match could be. And everything that happens in this match seems to have supported my theory. The key thing is the cage. Multiple times now, we’ve seen Garvin robbed of a major championship thanks to the Horsemen. They run in to stop a title match in the studio or JJ hands Tully a roll of quarters that ends up costing Garvin in the end. But now with a cage around them, Flair’s got nothing but his own wits and guts about him against a wrestler that’s proved a tough challenge for him in the past.
The cage is no certainty though. Again, Flair’s had his fair share of success in this setting. The Freebirds helped him out in 82, he made his Flare for the Gold to inaugurate Starrcade, and even just the year prior a quick low blow with the top rope saw him defeat Ricky Morton. Keeping the Horsemen is no guarantee of Flair going down, but still there’s a certain magic in the air when Garvin finally gets his hands on Flair in this.
That sense that Garvin might be Flair’s toughest opponent in the rawest sense–hard to knock down, quick to throw a punch of his own–permeates this entire match. As in all their previous encounters, Garvin’s happy to throw hands. He’s wailing away on Flair with punches and chops, cornering him up against the turnbuckles, blocking Flair’s attempts to get his own blows in, and generally just giving Flair a well-earned beating. There’s a level of gritty spite to Garvin here too as seen in those real petty slaps he throws to Flair, daring him to find any way forward. Flair even tries to get Garvin back with his own prodding slaps during a heat segment, but Garvin just responds by decking Flair with solid, harder strikes.
Very little goes Flair’s way here, especially in the first half of this bout. That’s not a real change for Flair, a champion that’s a known slow starter coming out of the gates, but importantly his attempts to reverse Garvin’s fortune are often swatted away as well. There’s an early, rather vicious attack on the arm, that calls to mind Garvin’s injury troubles in 86, but that never lasts long enough to achieve the result Flair needs (taking out Garvin’s famous Hands of Stone). Even a mid-game attack on the leg with the Figure Four gets flummoxed regularly. Flair’s able to initiate the attack, yes, but all his attempts to lock in the killer hold get reversed or dodged, keeping Garvin at a comfortable distance.
Still, that leg attack provides the greatest doubt that things might yet swing the champion’s way. Historically, we’ve seen Flair survive much, much worse at this point. Someone like Ricky Steamboat can spend an entire half hour controlling Flair only to see it slip away in a matter of seconds. This time, Garvin’s got a real target on his body and Flair’s definitely dented him. The leg selling Garvin goes for here is subtle but believable. He can stand his ground and fight but there’s a limp there when he overextends, and Flair’s made more out of less in the past.
And that’s what makes it all the more satisfying when it just never happens for Flair.
All his attempts to get something going get rebuked, and even worse for him, Garvin’s happy to escalate the violence when necessary. It’s perhaps most notable that Flair never really gets a chance to use the cage to his advantage. Garvin’s the first one to send Flair into the steel and Garvin’s the only one that’s able to really make that work for him in this match, grinding Flair’s bloody face into it at multiple points of the match. Nothing seems to be working for Flair here, not even his surroundings, and escape becomes his final recourse.
Of course, that fails too.
Flair climbs the ropes and tries to bail out of the ring. God bless though, Garvin catches him, rams Flair’s face into the upper support beam and we get just a beautiful combo of Flair stooging. First the flop where he crotches himself on the top rope–perhaps a little unintentional payback for how he got Morton in 86–and then getting caught with that beautiful diving sunset flip by Garvin for the three count. Flair tries to find a way out and that costs him in the end, a finish so sweet and universally effective, it still echoes today with things like the recent Priest/Something title switch in DPW.
Big guy gets the job done. Got his hands on that weasel and just beat the title out of him. Garvin tells us it’s better than marriage, having babies, or winning a million dollars. I wouldn’t go that far, Big Ron, but it’s pretty great all the same.
Rating: ****¼
