Talk about it here.

I know I'm in the minority, but I don't like Flair and Heenan together. Flair should have come in all by himself. This is the best Flair interview all year though. Flair used 2001 in this run longer than I remembered.

The thing that hurt the Flair/Heenan dynamic was that Bobby (aside from those house shows against Hogan) basically managed from behind the booth and would do interviews like this. It had it's good (Bobby at the Royal Rumble) to it, but it would get grating at times to hear him be a cheerleader behind the booth.

I do like that Bobby was conducting this interview rather than Okerlund or Bearer, but...yes. Heenan had simply been a buffoon for too long, and when he's confronted with Monsoon or a babyface it becomes all about the babyface vs. Heenan rather than about Flair. This is still the closest to the Classic Flair of Old, talking up limos, women, and unifying the championships.

Piper has to restrain himself on commentary. Strong promo by Flair. He’s read to unify the titles. I don’t mind Bobby here and he’s a good Flair fan boy on commentary. Stuff I didn’t like was him and the World Heavyweight title be the butt of jokes on the lead up to Flair showing up.

I like the Bobby/Flair dynamic and thought this was a perfect interview and love the way they are building the Piper feud right now to lead to Hogan at Mania (oh wait).

Heenan was an odd choice to do this interview considering that he was managing/advising Flair at the time, but the interview itself was classic. We've heard just about all of Flair's classic lines by now, but they sound fresh in the new surroundings.

 

Talk about being slow on the uptake: I just recently realized that the whole "be a pro" routine from Vince toward Piper and Savage was mostly a cover for the fact that they were doing commentary in post-production instead of live at the arenas (except, of course, for the time that Vince got laid out). Not that constant brawls in the booth would have been a good thing, but at least we could have seen reaction shots of Piper and Savage when Flair and Jake respectively were talking.

 

It's unbelievable that Rod and Randy were talking over the start of Flair's promo until Vince (somewhat reluctantly) cut them off. These three do that all the time, and it's really annoying, especially since you can't tell what anybody's saying. Are they just being ignorant, or are they getting so wrapped up in what they're saying that they misjudge when the person being interviewed starts to talk? If it's the former, shame on them; if it's the latter, whoever's helping them out in the studio needs to cue them better as to when a promo starts.

At the very least nobody takes a massive shit all over the World Title while Flair is talking. Not that it has much cred left, but it's something. And it's definitely a great Flair promo. I'm dreading seeing where any of this goes though, it's just been such a massive amount of killing Flair before he even has a chance to defend himself that I don't think he can possibly overcome it.