Posted on by bdamage1
Brian Damage
In September of 1991, Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation reeled in one of their biggest “gets” when they signed the then reigning WCW world heavyweight champion ‘The Nature Boy’ Ric Flair. Signing Flair was a huge move for the WWF not only because of who Flair is and was, but because he held the rival company’s top championship title. From the day he debuted in 1991 and all through 1992…Ric Flair had magical run that saw him win the WWF world title on two occasions and be one of the company’s top heels. By the end of January in 1993, Flair was no longer considered ‘the man’ and his WWF honeymoon was over.
As valuable a wrestler Flair was for the WWF in 1991 and the first part of 1992, it all seemed to go south after Wrestlemania VIII and never quite recovered for the remainder of his initial run with the company. You see, during his WWF title match against ‘The Macho Man’ Randy Savage at Wrestlemania VIII, Flair went off script and decided to blade himself drawing blood. Vince was dead set against his wrestlers bleeding because he wanted to present a family friendly sports entertainment company. To make matters worse, after the match was over, Flair once again went off script and grabbed Miss Elizabeth and kissed her.
The scene of a bloody Flair kissing a helpless Miss Elizabeth, threw McMahon into a tizzy. Even though Savage was aware of what Flair had planned to do…it was Flair who received the brunt of Vince’s wrath. When Flair returned to the back, McMahon met him and said…‘Just when you’re this close to greatness, you do something stupid and take two steps back.’ From that moment on, the relationship between Flair and McMahon wasn’t the same and began to sour a bit.
Despite the bad feelings that McMahon started to have about Flair, he still recognized his name value and continued to push him. Flair would regain the WWF title a second time, but his run was cut short after suffering an injury at the hands of the Ultimate Warrior. That led McMahon to take the title off Flair and award it to Bret Hart…as covered here.
According to Flair, the rematches between him and Hart did not draw well for the company and Flair questioned Hart’s abilities to carry a promotion as the top guy. Ric realized that he was no longer the once hot commodity that he once was when he first set foot for the company and started planning his exit strategy. When Flair first signed with the WWF, he negotiated a clause in his contract that would allow him to leave the WWF if he was unsatisfied with his character development.
Seeing as how Bret Hart was now the top guy and not being happy with his placement with the company….Flair would invoke that clause. It didn’t seem to bother McMahon all that much because he basically got everything he wanted out of Flair for the time he was with WWF. It was rumored that the original plan was for Flair to have his last match at Wrestlemania 9, but with both parties ready to sever ties with one another…the decision instead was to have the match take place on the WWF’s brand new show called Monday Night Raw.
‘Mr. Perfect’ Curt Hennig, who was once Flair’s ‘Executive Consultant’, was chosen to battle Flair in a ‘Loser Leaves the WWF’ match. Such a high profile match on RAW would certainly have eyeballs tuned in to his newest television project which was into just its third episode. The match aired on January 25, 1993 at the Manhattan Center the night after the Royal Rumble. As crazy as it might sound, there was very little build up to this encounter.
The match was set up a week prior on the second episode of RAW. Despite no real build up, both Flair and Hennig were up to the task. They were given free reign to call the match as it was taking place and was not rehearsed prior. The match started out with a long stare down between the combatants which apparently confused and angered Vince McMahon who wanted action. The main event match lasted over a solid 20 minutes which was sorta unusual for a typical free televised WWF match those days.
During the encounter Hennig bladed himself…which was ironic considering how it hurt the relationship a bit between McMahon and Flair. Aside from the wrestlers themselves, Bobby Heenan was the other star of this main event match. Heenan was on color commentary for this match and was selling everything the wrestlers were doing inside the ring. He was pro Flair and was screaming and trying to give directives to his friend. The ending came with a perfect plex seemingly out of nowhere and just like that Flair was “forced” to leave the WWF.
In reality, Flair had a few house show commitments after the loss, but Flair for the most part, was gone from the company and ultimately returned to his more familiar stomping grounds at WCW. While Ric Flair had a good solid first run with the WWF in 1991 to 1993…it possibly could’ve have been a bit better. In the end, Flair said he had no regrets about his first run with Vince and the WWF and would eventually return eight years later.