Sting vs Ric Flair At Clash Of The Champions Was The Best Star-Making Performance Ever
When the discussion comes up about the franchise players for WCW, the names Ric Flair and Sting consistently come up, and their legacies are very much intertwined. Their rivalry spanned the first and last episodes of Monday Nitro. All the more notably, though, the duo headlined the original Clash of the Champions free TV special. It’s easy to forget the degree to which that match put Sting on the map as a main event fixture. Indeed, it may have been the single biggest star-making match wrestling has ever seen.
The NWA Stood Up To WWE’s WrestleMania Brand
When Vince McMahon led WWE’s national expansion, it included signing top talents from across the country and invading territories they’d previous ceded to other wrestling promoters. The National Wrestling Alliance, and most particularly Jim Crockett Promotions was, the most formidable rival WWE had, but McMahon took the fight to them, including launching the annual Survivor Series PPV in direct competition with Starrcade to cripple the signature NWA event, and ultimatley force them to reschedule for future years.
One of the few successful ways in which the NWA struck back was with the Clash of the Champions free TV special, broadcasted free on cable television directly opposite WWE WrestleMania 4 on pay per view. The cost differential alone gave the NWA a fighting chance and let them take at least a small bite out of WWE’s business. The masterstroke of this competitive blow, though, was booking a young Sting to challenge Ric Flair for the NWA Championship in the main event. It was not only a good match that featured Flair, their biggest star, but an ideal platform for Sting’s coming out part as a singles wrestler as he delivered the best performance of his career to that date, more than holding his own for a forty-five minute time limit draw.
Ric Flair Brought His Formula To A Big Stage
A huge part of Ric Flair’s legacy was built well away from television cameras. He was one of the greatest traveling NWA Champions, carrying the belt across the country and abroad to defend it against regional stars. The formula was to make others look great—like they really could have won the title, before coming up just short when Flair stole a pin, got disqualified or counted out, or most notoriously took the match to a time limit draw.
This was precisely the formula for Flair vs. Sting at the original Clash of the Champions. Sting was fired up and looked like he had Flair’s number at every turn, only for the clock to save The Nature Boy at the forty-five-minute mark. Just as Flair had made regional champions all over look like they could one-hundred-percent hang with the best in the world, he did it for Sting on this night in front of a national television audience, and minted a new main event force.
Sting Proved He Could Get It Done In The Ring
Sting had an awesome look—musclebound and athletic, with bleach blond hair and face paint. He had charisma, too, connecting with crowds and doing some of the better babyface promo work of his era. Questions remained, though, as to whether he could cut it as a top guy in the ring.
To be fair, putting on technical classics was hardly a requirement for top babyfaces of the day. Sting’s NWA contemporary Lex Luger was no virtuouso, and in WWE Hulk Hogan had worked on top for years, and the newly arrived Ultimate Warrior was on the rise. Still, Sting distinguished himself by offering a bridge between bodybuilders and cartoon characters with a more old school NWA sensibility. He held up his end of the bargain, showing he had the cardio to go forty-five minutes, full throttle with Ric Flair, and look like a worthy champion, foreshadowing the great matches Sting would put on for years to come.
Sting Vs. Ric Flair Was A Defining Rivalry For WCW
The Sting vs. Ric Flair match at the original Clash of the Champions was only an early chapter in their rivalry. They’d go on to work matches for the NWA Championship and later the WCW Championship. Aside from Flair’s less than two year run in WWE in the early 1990s, he was a mainstay and WCW revisited his feud with Sting over and over again.
The two had chemistry in the ring and on the mic, and their mythology built upon itself, able to be understood as one continuous story across different iterations. They teamed up on the same side a number of times, but usually The Dirtiest Player in the game betrayed The Stinger to spark hostilities all over again.
Ric Flair was one of the biggest stars in wrestling going into his Clash of the Champions main event, world title match with Sting. The match put Sting on the map as one of the brightest stars in his own right, which he’d ride out for over a decade to follow at the forefront of WCW. It’s the work that made him a legend in his own right, as he transformed through different versions of himself for follow up runs in TNA, WWE, and AEW today.
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