Matches that should have been bigger than they were

[BomberPat]

I think with a lot of these guys, it's easier to say in hindsight.

When they brought in Flair, even Hogan, really, it was off the back of years of them looking like crap, and being booked like crap, in WCW. No one would have guessed, from his last days in WCW, that Hogan had good matches left him in, let alone that he could still offer something to the WWF product in 2002.

Flair, likewise, was brought in as an authority figure, not a wrestler. I don't think the WWF audience would have taken him seriously as a competitive opponent for Austin or Rock right off the bat, and his role flitted between wrestling and managing, between serious and comedic, all over the place, really. It seems mad not have booked Flair/Rock or Flair/Austin in a significant capacity, but watching the product at the time, it never felt like the stars had aligned for that to really ever have made sense.

[Wrasslin]

Only memory I have of Austin versus Flair was them having a match on Raw where Austin would be immediately disqualified if he threw a punch as Flair claimed he wasn't a 'wrestler'.

Austin of course forgot this part way through the match and clearly threw a punch. It went quiet whilst JR covered it by saying it was 'an open hand shot' and then everyone carried on until the inevitable Stunner and victory like nothing had happened. Weird one.

[tiger_rick]

6 minutes ago, BomberPat said:

I think with a lot of these guys, it's easier to say in hindsight.

When they brought in Flair, even Hogan, really, it was off the back of years of them looking like crap, and being booked like crap, in WCW. No one would have guessed, from his last days in WCW, that Hogan had good matches left him in, let alone that he could still offer something to the WWF product in 2002.

Flair, likewise, was brought in as an authority figure, not a wrestler. I don't think the WWF audience would have taken him seriously as a competitive opponent for Austin or Rock right off the bat, and his role flitted between wrestling and managing, between serious and comedic, all over the place, really. It seems mad not have booked Flair/Rock or Flair/Austin in a significant capacity, but watching the product at the time, it never felt like the stars had aligned for that to really ever have made sense.

Hogan was clearly a response to the reaction at WM and they got caught up in it. Flair though, they clearly brought in as an authority figure and then had that match with vince at the Rumble and convinced them enough of his value that he went in with Taker at WM. No reason for him not to have faced Austin properly after that and Rock later.

[BomberPat]

Yeah, Hogan is one of very few examples of Post-WCW WWF managing to strike while the iron was hot and capitalise on somebody's momentum in short order - though, considering it was Hogan, it's just as much Vince going back to what he knows as it was him riding the zeitgeist. It'd be interesting to see how Hogan would have been used if he stayed heel, though.

Like I said, they were all over the place with Flair. From babyface co-owner to heel co-owner, to sort of in the nWo but not really, to losing a match to end the whole co-owner angle with no build up whatsoever...after the co-owner stuff came to an end, he never really found his footing in the WWE until Evolution, and that was far more as a manager than a wrestler, so he was still stuck having to sometimes play the non-wrestler, easily knocked out by the babyface, mild nuisance, but sometimes play the legendary World Champion. He's Ric Flair, so he made it work, but for those few years you could count on your fingers the times that Flair looked like he belonged in the main event - his retirement match with Michaels, the one-night babyface match with Triple H, and the Wrestlemania match with Undertaker; though that was in the middle of Undertaker doing some of his career best work, in my opinion. You forget that, before his retirement angle, he spent the last year or two dicking around in the midcard with Carlito and Kenny Dykstra, or as an interchangeable "legend" with the likes of Roddy Piper and Sgt. Slaughter.

A lot of that's down to the booking so, yeah, some of his matches he was having in the WWF definitely could have been way bigger than they were, if they'd been a little more consistent on what they wanted Ric Flair to be. I just don't think they ever saw him as a guy that, at that point in his career, they were going to make money off - and, to be honest, they were probably right. Hogan was probably the only guy they were going to be able to make big money off as a nostalgia act, and people weren't likely to buy Ric Flair mixing it up in the main event with the Austins and Rocks of the world at that point. But who knows? Anything's possible with better booking! They gave away Austin/Flair, Rock/Flair and Hogan/Flair all on free TV with barely any build.

[wandshogun09]

2 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I had it in my head that they did Hogan/Rock/Austin as a team against Hall/Nash/X-Pac, but thinking about it, I can't make that fit any kind of timeline for all of them being about at the same time, so I must have just made that up from misremembering this one.

I could swear that on the recent 'Austin Walks Out' episode of Something To Wrestle, Bruce Prichard said that was the plan to headline Backlash in 2002. I think it was a Hogan, Austin, Rock team anyway. Maybe Triple H was in there instead of Rock or Austin though. 

Just thinking about that, a Hogan, Austin & Rock vs Nash, Hall & X-Pac match would've been way better than the crap top matches we did get on Backlash that year.