April 14, 20214 yr comment_5947578 8 hours ago, Al said: Flair/Von Erich from Christmas Star Wars '82. Take a largely one-off appearance by Flair and spark the hottest feud in wrestling. Just watched this today. Absolutely holds up. Michael Hayes pretty much looks the same today 39 years later. Benefit of eternally looking 47 I guess.
April 14, 20214 yr comment_5947579 The best part of that was how they set it up. David stepped in to replace Buddy Roberts to help the Freebirds win the six man titles, so Michael thought he was being a bro in return to help Kerry win the world title. The Von Erichs were too goody two shoes to allow that, and a legendary feud was born.
April 14, 20214 yr comment_5947580 Yo, I actually didn't even make the connection between that and why Michael Hayes & Terry Gordy stepped up to volunteer in the cage match between Kerry and Ric Flair.
April 14, 20214 yr comment_5947582 Well Hayes won a fan vote to be the second ref (worked vote I'm sure) so there was a storyline reason for him to be there. He tried to cheat to help Kerry so he could pay the Von Erichs back for helping them win earlier. So it made sense from Hayes' POV to do what he did and made sense from Kerry's POV to not want to have a world championship win sullied by such villainy.
April 14, 20214 yr comment_5947586 It wasn't a worked vote. Hayes was over like gangbusters as a babyface.
April 14, 20214 yr comment_5947587 It was not really a "one-off appearance" by Flair, either. Kerry's chase for the title had been the dominant story in World Class for the previous 6 months, from their match at Reunion Arena to the mysterious bounty to Flair being revealed as the source behind it, leading to the big cage match. It's one of the greatest builds in wrestling history.
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