The Classic Wrestling's Channel: Video: NWA 1986-World Heavyweight Championship: Barry Windham vs. Ric Flair: 2/14/1986

Source:The Daily Post 

Barry Windham is one of the best all around pro wrestlers of all-time. With great size, strength, athletic ability and intelligence. 6'6 275 pounds at least in his prime, 15-20 twenty pounds lighter than that when he was young. But someone who could beat you up with all sorts of moves, but who could also wrestle. Could body slam you, suplex you, but could also hit you with great dropkicks and flying close lines. Just a nightmare to have to wrestle unless you were also a big strong wrestler who could wrestle. Because he had so many ways who could hurt you.  

Classic matchup of a the pure wrestler in Ric Flair, vs. the young big strong stud. Who was a great power and finesse wrestler, Windham could wrestle you either way. Take on a Sting, Lex Lugar, Nikita Koloff, the Road Warriors, Dusty Rhoades, but could also and beat someone like Ric Flair or Ricky Steamboat. And if you want to call pro wrestlers the total package, for me that would be Lex Lugar as he called himself, but Barry Windham was certainly that as well. But even more athletic than Lex Lugar.

WWE: Video: NWA 1989-Halloween Havoc-Ric Flair & Sting vs. Terry Funk & Mr. Muta: I Quit Cage Match

Source:The Daily Post 

I don't know if you can find four better pro wrestlers for a cage I Quit match than Ric Flair, Sting, Terry Funk and Mr. Muta. The amount of pain and even torture these four men were able to put themselves through because of their conditioning, physical strength and just character and courage was simply unmatched by almost anyone else who has ever been a pro wrester. Two other guys I would thrown into this group would be Hulk Hogan and The Undertaker for the same reasons as these four men.

Ric Flair was seen as a classical if not classy pure wrestler who made most of his living just wrestling in the ring and not getting into street fights like this and most of that is true. But he beat the great Harley Race for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, a match where he may of lost on points, but beat Race in it. He was in a lot of cage matches, including with The Horseman against The Road Warriors and The Koloffs and did very well in those matches. Sting could wrestle or fight anyone anywhere. It didn't matter to him and Terry Funk was a street fighter who could wrestle. Similar to Mr. Muta.

Vader Bomb: Video: Ric Flair and the Koloffs: The Ric Flair-Nikita Koloff Rivalry

Source:The Daily Post

Just when I was starting to get into pro wrestling as a kid in mid-1980s as a nine and ten year old, I first discovered the World Wrestling Federation and what was called at the time that later became known as World Championship Wrestling, the National Wrestling Alliance, I started seeing Ric Flair who at the time was NWA World Heavyweight Champion. How you can be World Heavyweight Champion of a national wrestling organization, is still a mystery to me, but that is the title that Nature Boy Ric Flair had at the time.

The Nature Boy had several great rivals in NWA/WCW in the 1980s and 1990s pre-NWO takeover of the late 1990s, which is another subject and downfall of WCW, which is the subject of another blog. But one of those great rivals was Nikita Koloff a Lithuanian-Russian citizen who emigrated from Russia to the America and I believe is now an American citizen. And The Russian Nightmare was perfect for the Nature Boy. Even if you can past the part the Ric Flair is supposed to be Mr. All-American and Nikita was a Soviet bear at the end of the Cold War in WCW.

But that is just a part of what made this a great rivalry for a few years in the mid and late 1980s. Ric Flair 6'1 240-245 pounds, a pure classical wrestler who could also fight when he needed to. And pound for pound perhaps the best pure wrestler in the history of pro wrestling. Nikita Koloff, 6'5 280-285 pounds, maybe five-percent body fat, built very similar to Lex Lugar, but who was a much better wrestler, at least when it came to actually wrestling. One of the great pure wrestlers and power wrestlers in the history of pro wrestling.

So NWA/WCW has a perfect rivalry and matchup here. Because it wasn't just two huge giants trying to beat the hell out of each other. Flair is certainly not a giant physically, but certainly big and strong enough to defend himself and Koloff was big powerful man, but not a giant either like The Undertaker or Kane or someone that huge. These were two great wrestlers from completely different backgrounds. One American, the other Russian competing in America at the end of the Cold War. And it was great classic wrestling.

Incredible Spank: Video: NWA 1981: World Heavyweight Championship Match: Terry Funk vs. Ric Flair

Source:The Daily Post

One of the things that I always respected about The Nature Boy Ric Flair the pro wrestler is that he always took on the best. At least the best that was available to take on at the time. One of his famous lines was that "to be the man, you have to beat the man". And then you would say something like "and pal you aint it". But the first part was dead on and that is how he approached pro wrestling whether he was a contender the the World Champion. The only thing he was interested in was being the best in the pro wrestling business.

Terry Funk is the perfect example of Ric Flair's style as a pro wrestler as far as who he took on. Because when Funk was wrestling full-time in America and his head was right, he was one of the best to the point he was NWA World Heavyweight Champion at one point. He might of even beaten Ric Flair for his title. And they had a great rivalry in the 1980s. Funk was essentially a great street fighter who was big and strong and took incredible risks physically as a pro wrestler that his body paid a heavy price for and still pays that price, but he was also a great pro wrestler.