Ric Flair has earned a reputation as being one of the best wrestlers of all-time, mainly because he's had classic matches against a wide-ranging cadre of opponents, from Lex Luger all the way to Jumbo Tsuruta. Of all his opponents, his greatest rival has to be Ricky Steamboat, and Steamboat's is Flair. No two American wrestlers have had such a rich and storied rivalry built on mutual respect, competition and good old-fashioned wrestling prowess as the Steamer and Naitch have had.
Now, there are a ton of matches from the repertory. Their first affair was over the Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Television Championship in 1977. They had an awesome feud a year later for the NWA United States Championship. Their 1989 match for the NWA World Championship, the one where Steamer finally broke through and won the Big Gold Belt, is regarded as one of the great matches of all-time. One of Steamboat's last matches happened against Flair at Spring Stampede in 1994. However, I chose a lesser-known but still stellar match in their series that happened under the banner of All-Japan Pro Wrestling of all places. I'm not sure of the context behind the match, or the exact date, but this 1982 match was for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. For the first part of the match, Steamer puts on a clinic of offensive fireworks. In fact, Steamboat was in control of most of the match. Flair is on the sell most of the time, but he does get in a few bully moments and hits a sweet gutwrench suplex mid-match.
The move of the match, however, is when Steamboat drops Flair in an atomic drop. The sell on that from Flair was AMAZING! Anyway, the finish is very exciting, and it's definitely one worth watching. Both of these men showed why they're counted amongst the greatest in this match for different reasons, but you'll be impressed either way:
0 comments:
Post a Comment