Greed. The 1980s. Corporations running over the little guy. Good times.
Today, as a public service, I am going to give all of you a review of the most important DVD release in the history of WWE: Ric Flair and The Four Horsemen.
I'm not going to be another old guy who tries to school the young people about how cool wrestling was back in the day...but trust me, it was way cooler back in the day. Inside the ring, every movement meant something. Promotions spent months and years building up their feuds and they let them play out in a much more natural way. Guys didn't do silly flippy moves for the sake of getting in a silly flippy move. Nothing was so tightly scripted as the average RAW of Smackdown show is today. Guys fed off each other in and outside of the ring and worked in a kind of shorthand manner that allowed them to feed off of the crowd and what was going on that particular night and that particular group in the arena. It was more theatre and less absurdist tumbling.
Which brings this old man back to 1985 and 1986 and Jim Crockett Promotions. I first discovered the NWA on Superstation TBS in my teens. Being in the northeast, we'd been fed our weekly plodding WWF program for years. I was never anything more than a casual fan until the MTV War To Settle The Score and the whole Hogan-Piper leadup to Wrestlemania I. Then, one Saturday morning, I flipped on my TV and saw the wrestler who changed the rules as far as I was concerned: Ric Flair.
Ric Flair not only talked the talk, he literally walked the effing walk. He came out on TV wearing an expensive-looking suit and sunglasses and seemed to have no problem telling the interviewer (might have been Schiavone) how great he was. It seemed to me that "in real life" a champion would look more like Ric Flair did and a lot less than the ripped shirt-wearing "say your prayers and take your vitamins" moron that ruled the WWF.
Yes, when I was a kid, there were two camps: you were either a fan of Flair's or a fan of Hogan's. There was no middle ground whatsoever because the two of them were so dissimilar.
Speaking of dissimilar, the one man Ric Flair is always going to be associated with is The American Dream, Dusty Rhodes. Rhodes was, of course, the man of the people. Flair and the Horsemen represented the new and emerging yuppie class that was all too happy to squash the little man on their way to the top. That perfect confluence of two guys who were competitive as hell with each other who represented different things to different people and who both were able to articulate their differences in ways that grabbed the viewer by the neck propelled Jim Crockett Promotions and the NWA to amazing TV and angles that hold up today in a way that two guys bumping into each other backstage and then staring at each other never will.
The Four Horsemen were born not out of a booking decision, but out of necessity. The story is told that the Andersons; Flair; and Blanchard were put together to do a quick interview about upcoming matches they were having and Arn said something to the effect of "not since the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse have you seen devastation like you see here before you." With that one ad-libbed (NOT SCRIPTED!) line, the Four Horsemen were born. And the fact that this famous (infamous?) interview was not on the set and lost to the sands of time is the major quibble of the DVD set. Whether it was recorded over (as legend goes, Crockett reused tapes in a cost-cutting move) or it was just misplaced, the failure to have this on the set is egregious.
One of the complaints I have heard from old school/kayfabe fans is that sometimes there is a lack of candor in some of the releases; like people don't want to ruffle anyone's feathers or something. Well, one thing is for sure. One Ric Flair and The Four Horsemen, that is not the case. Ric Flair seems to use this opportunity as the Teflon Legend of Wrestling to take the piss out of old foes such as Eric Bischoff and Jim Herd. When asked what he thinks of former wrestlers like Sid Vicious, Flair simply does not hold back. The man is a storyteller and truly comes off as relishing the chance to get some stuff off of his chest.
The Horseman who left the biggest impression on me after watching the DVD was Tully Blanchard. While not featured as much as Flair, Blanchard makes a point with every word he says. And although he is out of the business and a preacher these days, you can see the mischievous glint in his eye when he talks about the old days. The guys obviously had the time of their lives back then--even if you only believe half of the stories they tell. Blanchard obviously enjoyed his time as one of the elite and he should have. While Flair was the champ and was cool and Arn was the guy who you believed could really kick some ass, Tully always came off as the snot-nosed rich kid who knew he was better than you and never minded rubbing it in your face. What a great role to play.
Tully is also the guy who kind of brought manager James J. Dillon to the group. It's easy to see that in a group of great talkers that a manager could get lost in the mix. In fact, back in the day, I had no idea as to why he was there. But to a man, all of the Horsemen who were involved with the Dillon incarnation set the record straight and tell you just how important JJ was to the group. Really changed my opinion of him in a lot of ways to hear the other guys talk about him in such glowing terms.
Overall, I would rank Ric Flair and The Four Horsemen as the best of the WWE documentaries since very little of it is sugar-coated. I mean, hell, they even dug up a Botoxed Paul Roma and asked him about his time with the group. Roma, by the way, is clearly delusional when discussing himself and Ric Flair. Triple H hits it on the head when he says that everyone was expecting Tully to be returning to the group and then they brought out "the job guy from WWE". I'll never forget what a Fart in Church moment that was back in the day. The group wilted after that and every incarnation got a little bit worse. Not good times.
Glaring omission: Ole Anderson is not interviewed. The fact that he left the group and how that was handled was touched on but it would have been nice to hear from the man himself. Ole must still be harboring a grudge against Vince for the whole Black Saturday hijacking of Georgia Championship Wrestling from back in the day.
If given my druthers--and I am so not sure what 'druthers' are, anyway--the match selection would have been different. Then again, most of the great Flair matches are already on his solo DVD release. All of the key moments that I wanted to see were on there as part of the documentary, so I am not complaining.
Overall, I give it an A for the documentary and a C for match selection. It's a DVD that every old-school fan should own because we will never see anything like the Four Horsemen again. They were of a time and were unique. They were the first "faction" or gang of wrestlers who hung together like family. Those bonds extend even to this day between the wrestlers and the fans who remember what a ground-breaking act that they were.
Labels: DVD Review, Four Horsemen, Ric Flair, WWE 24/7
