Posted December 18, 200717 yr comment_5425519 NWA World Heavyweight Title: "Nature Boy" Ric Flair © vs. Barry Windham (1/20/87) This is from World Wide Wrestling taped in Fayetteville, North Carolina and Dusty is doing color with Tony Schiavone. Flair shakes Windham's hand before the match in an odd sign of sportsmanship at this stage of his career. The crowd is molten already at a minute into the match as they have done a great job at building Barry up the past few weeks on TV. Windham was awesome at this stage of his career as he was just so fluid in the ring and was so agile for a man his size plus he was a great worker. Flair of course was Flair and Windham seemed like one of the easiest opponents he ever worked with. Windham would dominate the early part of the match and Flair the middle and both men looked great in everything they did. The last few minutes of this was great stuff with it looking like Windham was going to take the title and almost had Flair when the bell rang for the draw. It's too bad that the two best matches of their series was cut up either by commercial breaks like this one or edited on a commercial release. Dusty also was tremendous on color as he put over Windham, Flair, & JCP hard which in his spot as the booker was what he was supposed to do. This was a fantastic match and a slam dunk nomination.
January 15, 200817 yr comment_5427105 Another must-have stone cold lock. The match structure isn't so much a Flair match as it is a classic wrestling match structure (face shinr, heel takes over, hot end run) although Flair did this alot. Windham takes control early on. Flair gets frustrated but plays the methodical "I know I am going long" game. The biggest mark early on is that the commercial breaks hurt the flow but we see that a ton. Flair tosses Barry outside mid-match and takes over. The end run has Flair and Barry going back and forth and I remember watching this in 1987 thinking "Barry is going to win it!" I always hated the ending as this could have been Barry's big moment. However, I think this compares favorably to the Flair-Taylor series and may be comparable to the best of the series.
August 4, 201411 yr comment_5617042 This is a high end nomination. Holy shit this was great and it's not even their best match in the series. The story telling was great. The athleticism was great. The selling was great. The crowd heat was great. That finishing run was hot. Damn this was awesome.
