500 Words...Champion Vs. Champion
Posted by Lee Baker
on 02/04/2007
Have you ever dreamt about huge inter-promotional “Champion vs. Champion” matches?
Perhaps Sting vs. The Ultimate Warrior in 1990?
Bret Hart vs. Muta in 1995?
How about Steve Austin vs. Goldberg in 1998?
I think we all have at some point. In reality though, such matches only take place in the fantastical minds of wrestling fans or in toy wrestling rings with action figures. These matches invariably remain as fantasy, especially when talking about great rival promotions like WCW and WWE. Neither would want to see their Champion losing, and rightly so.
However, there was a time when such a dream match fell into the lap of Vince McMahon in quite extraordinary circumstances. Multi-time World Champion Ric Flair had been fired from WCW after major backstage disputes with supremo Jim Herd. Vince, smart business man that he is, wasted no time in signing Flair up and by August 1991 he was WWF talent. Seemingly out of nowhere, Vince had biggest WWF star of the eighties (Hulk Hogan) and the biggest NWA star of the eighties under his WWF umbrella… and even bigger than that, Flair (title holder at the time of his dismissal) had brought the actual NWA Championship belt with him…
At the time, this was as big a wrestling news story as you could imagine. While disgruntled WCW fans were chanting “we want Flair” at live events, the Nature Boy himself was appearing on WWF television with the big gold belt around his waist. With the prospect of WWF Champion Hulk Hogan vs. NWA Champion Ric Flair looming, insiders across the land were simultaneously having heart attacks and creaming themselves…
One slight problem though; the one man who mattered in this situation didn’t see it the same way.
Vince, ever the competitor, instead decided that WWF outsider Flair needed to ‘pay his dues’ first. While Hogan continued his program with the increasingly stale Sgt Slaughter, Flair wrestled in undercard matches up and down the country. By the time Flair managed to poke his nose into the main event scene in late 1991, WCW had sued the WWF over their use of the belt and it was no longer appearing on WWF television. The window of opportunity had passed…
Vince McMahon had the chance to put the ‘real’ NWA/WCW Champion against the WWF Champion on national television or pay-per-view, but through sheer bloody-mindedness refused to do it. Not for the last time, ego got in the way. More concerned with devaluing the rival belt (by never publicly acknowledging what the belt really was and making Flair ‘earn’ his main event spot), Vince robbed us of a dream Champion vs. Champion match that could have defined an era. It goes down as one of the biggest wasted opportunities of all time.
The dream was over.
Vince did, however, get to humiliate his closest rival by parading their World Title belt around on WWF television for months. For anyone who thinks Vince overreacted with Bret in Montreal, now you know why…
***********************************************
My name is Lee Baker, and that was 500 words.
Any questions, queries, praise or abuse, feel free to email me at eoe4w@hotmail.com. A response is guaranteed.
Thanks for reading.
Click here to let us know what you thought about this column on TWV's official discussion forums!
Copyright © 2005; TheWrestlingVoice.com & Douglas Nunnally.
All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer & Privacy Statement
