Posted July 1, 201213 yr comment_5508731 Fall #1: Really good. What stands out is how good everything looks. Both guys are laying their shots in. Flair seems to enjoy working a little more stiff. Flair does some stuff I haven't seen from him before. I liked his armbar counter, and putting up both forearms to block a clothesline was great. He should have done that against some of his other opponents. Imagine how lost Lex would be with someone countering his clotheslines. Anyway, Tenryu finishes Flair off with a powerbomb to take the first fall. So far this feels fairly similar to the best Flair/Garvin matches of the 80s. Fall #2: The production values in this match are really strong, so the stiffness and some of the details really stand out in a big way. The biggest example is Flair's repeated attempts to get a pinfall on Tenryu, where he finally gets frustrated and gets up and yells at someone in the crowd. Pretty standard Flair spot, but the camera angles and audio really help get over the struggle because you can hear the breathing and see everything so clearly. Flair finally gets his chance to go after Tenryu's knee, which he tried do in the first fall and was cut off. He does some nice work, including a hold I don't know the name of that everyone uses to work over the knee (usually not Flair) to take the fall. Fall #3: Flair with (almost) an STF(!), except his forearms are criss-crossed on either side of Tenryu's head instead of holding a crossface. But eventually, he slides into it and it becomes an STF. Tenryu's counter to the figure four is an interesting one, grabbing Flair's other leg and taking control of the hold (for lack of a better way to describe it). I love the string of by-the-book Flair nearfalls, especially because Tenryu is wrestling like Kerry Von Erich. Aside from getting slammed off the top rope early in the match and putting himself in position very obviously because Tenryu couldn't reach him, and doing this weird thing where he walks around the ring for way too long to give Tenryu time to get to his feet near the finish, this is a great Flair performance worth tracking down. I don't think this is at the level of something like, say, Sting/Vader, but Flair is much better at certain aspects of his game than anyone, even this late, and even if he's not as good as some guys in others, and his strengths shine when working Tenryu. I'd need to go back and watch the April match, as I'm not sure if it's that this is pro-shot instead of handheld, but this seems much better, even with the DCOR finish, and even if I can't recall enough to say how different it is from the April match. Fuck the WWF, Flair should have gone to SWS after getting away from Herd. I wish MUGA would have existed in 1991-1992.
