Wrestling in a Bottle: The Complete and In-Depth Ric Flair DVD Review
Submitted by Snapple on Saturday, December 6, 2003 at 2:00 AM EST



Hello maniacs, and welcome to another edition of the column that burns when you urinate, Wrestling in a Bottle. I'm your host, Snapple. This week, I was up in the air about what to write about. At first, I was going to start writing a book review of the Wrestlecrap book, but Dumass beat me to it. Not only that, but he managed to get in RD's mailbag for the review. Well, I'm happy for him, and I'll continue to shill the link to buy the Wrestlecrap book at the bottom of all my columns like I've been doing. The book is good by the way, although I wish it were longer and had more color pictures.

So then, I decided I would scrap the book review and instead write the first DVD review of the Ultimate Ric Flair Collection on LOP. Of course, again I wasn't quick enough on the draw, and Tito beat me to THAT. Well, I'm glad Tito gave a positive review, but I'm not backing down this time. I'm going to post my review, and by gum, it'll be the bestest review there ever was! I shall hopefully run it down so as to possibly entice you into buying it, or I can bounce my thoughts off of people who have already seen it, or perhaps even seen the matches when they originally happened. I'm quite happy for Ric that his DVD became the fasted selling wrestling DVD of all time. I wonder if Vince is surprised by this. He's probably thinking to himself, "People must've really liked that Royal Rumble win, because that's the only real WWF thing on the DVD." I'm also happy because it shows that the fans still remember the legacy and respect Flair for the champion that he'll always be and are more willing to spend their money on this collection than the latest Triple-H DVD they're trying to shill. Not that Triple-H hasn't had good matches in the past, but this is Ric Flair we're talking about.

The whole viewing was a pleasant experience to me, as I never saw any of Flair's early stuff, save for a few Steamboat matches, or even most of his WCW stuff. I was born in 1983, and I didn't discover wrestling until I started flipping the channels and I saw this dork called the Ultimate Warrior fighting some scary guy named the Undertaker. I never heard of this promotion called NWA at the time either. I only knew the WWF, so this was a learning experience for me.

Snapple's DVD Review: The Ultimate Ric Flair Collection

So it's the day before Thanksgiving. I'm already back at home from college, but unfortunately a lot of my friends are not, or they're visiting with family or something. I'm stuck at home with no internet access, no video games, and no friends. By gum, this is the perfect time to run out and find that Ric Flair DVD. I would've waited until Christmas, but I just couldn't resist. First I try Best Buy, who has a HUGE DVD section, so of course... they don't have it. Yeah, fuck you, Best Buy. Next, I try the mall. Certainly my local Suncoast would have the DVD, because they have everything. Unfrotunately, I forgot that my local Suncoast went out of business about four months ago, so I dejectedly tried the last place it could possibly be in the mall, the fye store. Of course, this isn't just any fye, it's probably the smallest fye in the country. It's really small, and they barely have any DVDs, and they do not have a wrestling DVD section at all. I was about to go downtown when for some reason, on a small display in the corner of the store, I see a copy of the Ric Flair Collection almost being covered up by a Bad Boys II DVD. That's no way to treat a legend, but I was happy. I bought my $26.99 plus tax DVD, and raced home to pop it in the DVD player.

Disc One

The first disc is split up into three of Flair's feuds from the 80s, against Harley Race, against Dusty Rhodes, and against Barry Windham. There are only three complete matches on the first DVD, but they're important ones. Aside from that, there's a lot of commentary from Ric, pre-match and post-match promos, and just generally a lot of stuff that highlights the things leading up to the matches. I would say this "extra" footage is about half of the actual disc. Plus, in all three discs, there are TONS of easter eggs (hidden clips), that you'll probably find on your own. They're not hard to find.

Before I get started, I want to point out that on the five point scale I'll be using to grade the matches, I consider a two star match to be about average, the minimum for anything watchable. Anything above two stars is an above average wrestling match, and a five-star match represents less than 1% of all wrestling matches, so this may be a harsher grading scale than some "marks" might use, but I think is a pretty fair scale.

Ric Flair vs. Harley Race (Cage match, Starrcade '83)
In commentary, Flair puts over Race as the most legitimately "tough" guy he's ever stepped in the ring with. The whole setup for this match was when Harley won the title from Flair in a controversial finish. Harley swore to never give a title shot to Ric Flair again, and he even put a $25,000 bounty on his head to anyone who could take Flair out of professional wrestling (Gee, that angle sounds familiar). So Flair was attacked and chose to "retire" from wrestling for good. Little did the fans know he would pop back for one last nostalgia run that would last for 20 years. The point is though that this perfectly setup the very first Starrcade in a steel cage match. All these segments taught me one thing: Harley Race may be a legend, but he sucks like a Hoover on the mic.

As for the match itself, it wasn't bad, but truthfully I didn't think it was that great either. Flair bled like a stuck pig, and it was clearly a very emotional match, but I thought it could've been paced a little faster. All of Race's countless diving headbutts looked just plain awkward, as he had to use his hands to steer himself in mid-fall, and Flair clearly screwed up a piledriver at one point. Still, a very long emotional match that played to the crowd very well.
Rating: **1/2 / *****

Ah, I can smell the hatemail already from people who will berate me for saying two legends like Flair and Race ever had anything less than a four star match.

Ric Flair vs. Dusty Rhodes (Starrcade '85)
To me, this may well be Flair's most remembered feud, but for certain when I think of Big Dust, I think of Flair. Flair put over Dusty by saying of all the opponents he's faced, Dusty was the most "fun" person to work with. To setup their first (to my knowledge) big payoff match at Starrcade, Dusty actually ran down to help Flair clear the ring of some heels, but Flair and the Andersons decided to lock him in a cage and beat the snot out of him instead. According to the story, Dusty injured his ankle, and to his credit, he sold it quite well, and he looked almost like he was crying at the time. Plus, the rivalry of the common man versus high society was also a natural fit.

The match itself was a great one, and I do have to acknowledge that Dusty moves around the ring a lot better than a man of his size and shape should. He and Flair have a very natural chemistry that shines through and made for good matches that were fun to watch. I personally think that Dusty lasted a little too long in a Figure-Four, given that his ankle was supposed to be hanging by a thread, but I won't hold it against him. The Dusty Finish, I might, simply because it was supposed to be the biggest show of the year, and the screwjob finish made Flair look weak. You have to give it to Dusty though. He's a master politician, and he makes Triple-H look like the Dan Quayle of backstage politicking. Still, a very very solid match between two good workers, and a great choice for the DVD.
Rating: **** / *****

Ric Flair vs. Barry Windham
I have to say something about Barry. I've always heard about Barry Windham and what a great athlete he was, but I'd never actually seen him. On the other hand, I have a few old Ric Flair matches and clips on my computer that I got from KaZaA that feature this goofy-looking blonde guy who I wasn't sure his name. Imagine my surprise when I started watching this DVD and found out they were one and the same. "THAT's Barry Windham?" I said to myself exactly. However, watching him wrestle I was incredibly impressed. He's great to watch, but sadly, I still don't think he looks like a real contender. I believe that hypothetically if a guy like Barry showed up on RAW next Monday like a fresh face who we'd never met, still the same age as he was in his prime, he'd be a jobber on HeAT for the rest of his career before getting let go, regardless of his in-ring talent. Watching Flair and Windham wrestle really makes me remember that the NWA is/was not the company of superheroes. That was the WWF. The wrestlers in NWA were just regular guys like you and me, and Dusty, and Ric, and Barry. The difference being that they knew how to fight (...and Ric had a limo, but you get the idea). Ric compliments Barry by saying he's one of the only men in the industry who could not only keep up with him move for move in the ring, but could also leave Flair behind on occasion.

So while I didn't really see Barry as championship material as he was wrestling Flair, my mouth was agape. The 60 minute technical masterpiece that I saw blew away the other two matches on the disc, as well as most of the so-called "classic" matches I've seen on television. The only thing I believe the match lacked was obviously a proper ending. I won't give it away, but I'll just say that it was a perfectly sound match up until it was ended so abruptly.
Rating: ***** / ***** (A perfect rating)

Disc Two

The second disc also contains three complete matches. Two against Ricky Steamboat and one against Terry Funk. However, this disc also contains three special videos, "The Plane Crash," "The History of the Horsemen," and "A Day in the Life of the Horsemen." All of which are very informative, but I'll get to that in a second. First up is Ricky Steamboat.

Ric Flair vs. Ricky Steamboat
A lot of people are very familiar with this feud and consider it Flair's best feud ever. The DVD certainly tries to play this up themselves, serving up two Flair-Steamboat matches instead of one like the other feuds. Now, I had already seen the Wrestlewar '89 match prior to this DVD, but it was great to see it one more time. I am myself more of a fan of the Steamboat-Savage match than most of the Steamboat-Flair matches, but obviously the Flair-Steamboat matches are still classic. I think the obvious foil of their characters was perfect for the feud, but one problem was that Steamboat was the good guy and yet represented the upstanding family man, who loves his son and would never look at another woman the way he did at his wife. Flair was the stylin' and profilin' player who paraded around multitudes of beautiful women. Now, who would YOU root for? My point exactly, and although Steamboat is the guy you just can never hate, I can see why during all the promo videos for this match, Flair's pops seemed to be equal to or greater than Steamboat's, despite being a heel.

The first match featured was a 2 out of 3 falls match from Clash of the Champions 6. It was a quality match that is by almost any standards a technically solid and exemplory match, but I think it naturally is put under higher scrutiny simply because it is a Flair-Steamboat match. I enjoyed the match. Towards the middle though, I was waiting for the pace to pick up, waiting for it to pick up, waiting for it to pick up. Yes, I typed that repeatedly on purpose, because the wear-down parts of this match were the one thing that I think kept it from being a perfectly awesome match. It was fairly good, but the ending was also anticlimactic, albeit for the purpose of making a rematch.
Rating: ***1/2 / *****

The second match which the DVD dubs "The Greatest Match" is from Wrestlewar '89, and Flair says about this match that he's flattered that people consider it the greatest match of his career, but that he says he and Steamboat had countless matches better than that one that most people will never see because they weren't televised. Still, it was a grrrreat match, although maybe not perfect, there didn't seem to be any inherently bad parts to the match. I felt there was room for improvement that keeps this from being a five star match, but I can't put my finger on how. Parts of it didn't excite me as much as they could have, but it was still noticably better than the already good 2/3 falls match. Good build up to the simple finish. I think that there's absolutely nothing wrong with a roll-up finish as long as it's built up well. Some of wrestling's greatest matches have ended in a roll-up. Matches like this one, Bret vs. Davey Boy from Summerslam '92, Michaels vs. Jericho from this year's Wrestlemania, MANY of the Benoit-Angle matches like Unforgiven 2002 and Wrestlemania X7, all ended with a roll-up, but it doesn't take a thing away from the match, and can make the match all the more memorable if done right.
Rating: **** / *****

Terry Funk vs. Ric Flair
I have to give it up for Terry Funk. I mean, this man is STILL wrestling regularly. The man is over 60, and he's still wrestling. Have you seen a picture of him lately? Quite frankly, the man looks like crap, and if he weren't a legend, people would probably just see this old guy in the ring. You HAVE to respect his love of the sport though. Clearly, the man loves wrestling more than anything else, and you just know he's never going to stop until he seriously injures himself to the point where he can't stand up in a ring.

This DVD isn't about the Terry Funk of today though. It's about the Terry Funk of 14 years ago, who was still a pretty handsome guy and could really go at it in the ring. Flair puts Terry over in the commentary as not only a great wrestler, but one of the true innovators of the sport, particularly the hardcore part of it. He mentions how he thinks Terry was the first person to use a table as a weapon in wrestling. Now, I'm not sure if that's true, but those tables they were using sure don't look like they were meant for wrestling, and they certainly didn't seem to have any give like the breakaway crap tables they use now when Flair's head was piledrove right on it.

I have two words to say for the featured match: Bad ASS. After watching so many of these long technical matches, it was so refreshing to see a great BRAWL, because that's exactly what it was. The stipulation of the match was "I quit" rules, and it was just a fun, brutal match. Some "smarks" like to think that a good match has to be some pretty technical match all the time. Well, I'd like to think that I'm someone who can appreciate different styles of wrestling, and although it's easy to be desensitized to the brutality of old-school wrestling matches after watching all of the ridiculously over-the-top spots of the past few years, I still felt charged up watching this match. My only beef was that I actually wish it were longer, which is pretty selfish since I think it went at least 25 minutes or something like that, I wasn't paying attention to the time. Although, I do felt that it ended just when it was getting really good. Also, I'm not sure what this says about my wrestling expertise, but I may have enjoyed this match equally as much as the Flair-Steamboat matches.
Rating: **** / *****

Disc Three

Disc Three is kind of an amalgam of other Flair matches. The three featured are his Rumble victory, one of his matches against Sting, and his match against Triple-H earlier this year. There's also a fourth match which was his debut in the WWWF in 1976 (Note: Not his debut match as a pro, just in Vince Senior's company).

Ric Flair Jumps to the WWE
There was a lot of great promo footage for his initial jump to the WWF as the "Real World Champion." When you think about it, nothing has ever paralleled the magnitude of Ric Flair just showing up in the WWF one night with the NWA world championship, even to this day. You can't compare the WCW invasion, because that was after WCW had folded and was entirely orchestrated by Vince. I think just the footage of Flair in the WWE is probably more interesting than the Rumble match itself. It highlighted a lot of his feud with Roddy Piper, which I liked, and just some kick ass promos. Unfortunately, I was hoping they'd show his feud with Randy Savage, but I understand the DVD set only had room for really nine big matches from his greatest opponents (and Triple-H. Zing!), so I don't mind too much.

The Royal Rumble match was great but annoying at times. Flair does a great job of making himself look vulnerable, but I think this match made him look a little too weak. After some point in the match, Flair kinda lost the ability to wrestle and just got pummeled all around the ring while somehow not getting eliminated. The ending, and I'll go ahead and spoil it because most people should know the outcome, was disappointing because Flair needed Hogan's help to win, as if Hogan is saying, "That's my belt, and if anyone's going to win it, it'll be with my help." That aspect reminds me a lot of the finish to Wrestlemania 4... damn Hogan... but I digress. The Rumble was pretty fun and certainly chaotic, but I think the quality of it as a match is a bit overrated in my own personal opinion, which I know goes against the general consensus of fans who think this was one of the better Rumbles and an overall great match. I think it had a certain emotional and unpredictable value to it at the time, because it was probably one of the few Rumbles where the winner wasn't obvious from the get-go. I mean, let's face it. The Rumble winner is usually pretty damn predictable, but this one wasn't, and that was probably it's one true strong point.
Rating: **1/2 / *****

Ric Flair vs. Sting
Arguably the biggest babyface in WCW history, it's no wonder Sting had so many run-ins with the greatest heel of the decade, Ric Flair. Indeed, even though they only show one Sting-Flair match from 1994, they go into great detail about many Sting-Flair moments in both WCW and NWA history, such as kicking Sting out of the Horsemen. I personally thought the pre-Crow Sting was a little over-the-top goofy, character-wise, but then again I could say the exact same thing for Hulk Hogan, so who am I to judge? One thing that can't be denied though is that Sting was one Hell of a wrestler. I think that after seeing him wrestle in NWA-TNA, his skills have noticably deteriorated with time, probably even moreso than Flair, but he used to be able to really go at it like nobody's business.

The match is Clash of the Champions XXVII. That's in 1994, and I BELIEVE this was actually the PPV one month before Hogan came in and squashed Flair for the title in his debut WCW match, if I'm not mistaken. The match was very crisp, and you could tell that Sting and Flair had wrestled each other so many times that they knew exactly what to do with each other. The chemistry was beautiful, but I wish the match went a little longer. I think this was a great match to pick from the vast Sting vs. Flair library, so it is fortunate that I'm not grading this match on the retarded post-match antics. The less said the better, but it was a good match to signal the end of an era in WCW.
Rating: **** / *****

Ric Flair vs. Triple-H
I want to shake the hand of the booking genius who came up with this match. I honestly do. At the time, Triple-H was feuding with Kevin Nash, and Flair was for lack of a better word his manager. For one solitary night though, they threw feuds out the window and to present us one of the best RAW main events of the year, if not THE best main event of RAW this year. Flair had been a heel, but he still had the power to make fans respond exactly the way he wanted them to, by turning face for just one match before going right back to being a heel the very next week. Triple-H challenged Flair to a title match, thinking he would just lay down, but instead Flair got fired up all evening with several tear-jerking encounters, and decided instead to put his best effort forward into defeating Triple-H and doing the unthinkable by becoming world champ.

Well, to say the match was emotional would be an understatement. It told a story so well, and I believe even beyond the excitement factor, there really was a solid wrestling bout in there. At the time (and even now, really), Triple-H was a monster. He beat guys cleanly, no-sold everything, and nobody even looked like a legitimate contender against him. Most of his matches have been boring because of that, but look at his match with Ric Flair, and you'll see Triple-H bouncing around the ring like Ric Flair had unleashed this untapped force upon the champion. So yes, Triple-H CAN still have a good match, but he has to allow it to happen. Sadly, that won't happen if he continues to no-sell all of his opponents. Flair made people believe he could beat Triple-H so much, that I actually heard people online say that the WWE were fools for not giving Flair the belt. Give me a break! The week before the WWE had Flair as a manager. The WWE set out to give us a great main event and they did. The match didn't go that long, but I doubt Triple-H would've been able to go much longer without a rest hold, so I'll just remain satisfied with the match as is.
Rating: ***1/2

Ric Flair vs. Pete Martinez
I seriously wonder why people would root for some people just because they were a face. Whoever this Pete Martinez was, he... was... horrible. Jobber or not, I don't think that in ten minutes he used a single move other than a punch or a kick. What a loser! Anyway, the match was a long drawn out squash (I think?) by Flair. Yeah, this match was only thrown in for novelty purpose, and that's about all it's good for.
Rating: I ain't even going to bother rating it.

Overall

Overall, I am just blown away. This is THE DVD collection to get. I got ten and a half hours of footage for only $27. If you don't think that's a good deal, then by all means, don't buy it, but you'll be missing out. Every minute of the DVD is worth it, from the matches, to the classic promos, to Flair's commentary, to the video montages. There are very informative packages on the Horsemen, which have great commentary by Flair, Arn Anderson, and even Tully Blanchard. There's a great piece on the plane crash too, which I'm not sure is the same piece that aired on Confidential, but regardless is a great piece of footage. One of the Easter eggs is even about the history of the "Woo," which I found highly entertaining. The worst matches on the DVD are quite good, and the best matches are nothing short of phenominal. I HIGHLY recommend it.

Ask Triple-H

HHH: What a great piece on Naitch's DVD collection, eh? It really is a great DVD, and I watch it every night before I go to bed with Stephanie to help get me in the mood. Nothing gets my blood boiling faster than some of that sweet sweet wrestling. I think Snapple may have been smoking crack by giving my match against Flair anything less than five stars, but the opinions of faceless 12 year-olds on the internet don't matter anyway. Oh, and they're not rest holds, doofus. It's called ring psychology. Only a ring general like myself can truly utilize the potential of the side headlock. Anyway, I'm here to answer a letter, so let's get it over with.

dear h

why do u waste so much water during ur entrance when there r so many people in poor & droughtstricken countries who dont get even a single drop to drink?

sidversion6.7

HHH: That's an excellent question, Sid. Wait, no it isn't. I contain all the vast information of the inner workings of the biggest wrestling company in the world, and you're asking me why I waste water? What is it with you damn hippies and your demands anyway? "Don't waste water, stop cutting down the rainforest, quit giving Chris Jericho wedgies in front of his wife." Blah blah blah. You're all the same. Well, you know I would spray something else into the crowd besides water, but the last time I tried using some vodka, the front row all screamed about how their eyes were burning. All that crowd noise was drowning out my cheers, so I decided to stick with the water. I'm sure the people in the third-world countries understand that I'm stealing their water to make millions of children happy, which is clearly more important than their health. If anything, they're the selfish ones.

Anyway, that's all I'm doing this week. Don't like it? Tough cookies.

Final Thought

I would've done RAW and Smackdown thoughts this week, but I guess I highly underestimated the length and amount of time the Flair DVD would take up, so I'm stopping here. I do have opinions though, such as why the Armageddon main event has been so shittily booked, why the Benoit-Brock match was one of the smartest pieces of booking in the WWE this year, and why Jamie Noble just made one of the stupidest and also most hilarious heel turns ever. Until next time.

-Snapple

Like the review? Didn't like it? Have a question? Comment? Concern? Anything? Email me. happydude5000@msn.com

Questions for Triple-H should include the phrase "Ask Triple-H" in the subject header.

Click to order the greatest book you don't own, Wrestlecrap: The Book!








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