Flair v Kerry! In Hawaii!

Ric Flair v Kerry Von Erich (Polynesian Pro, 2/13/85)

I think it was Charles/Loss from PWO who said years ago that we never give ourselves enough distance from Flair to properly miss him. Like, I'll go years without watching a wrestler and then I'll throw on a match of theirs out the blue and pretty quickly I'll be like "Oh. That's why I loved that person." Other than a brief period about a decade ago I've never really given myself enough time away from Flair to appreciate what I'd potentially miss about him. What Flair does have though, is a bunch of match-ups against individual wrestlers that I won't watch for years. I've never gone eight years without watching a Ric Flair match but I did go eight years without watching a Flair v Steamboat match. Flair v Kerry is a pairing that's produced a couple matches I love, but on the other hand after I last watched one of their matches I felt like I could go a lifetime without needing to see them wrestle again. Well I guess life is too short to be making such definitive statements and I hadn't seen this in like 12 years so last night I fired it up. I think I'd still have their 8/82 match as my #1 Flair v Kerry match but this was pretty damn great. Nothing they did was a major shift from past encounters and structurally it was fairly predictable for a long Flair title defence, but having a good idea of what you're getting isn't necessarily a bad thing and they did throw in a couple interesting wrinkles in the back half. I loved the opening few minutes, though again they did nothing out of the ordinary. Flair didn't start out as a sportsman exactly, but he was fairly reserved and mostly working clean. Then Kerry gets the better of a few exchanges and Flair starts to unravel like you knew he would. Even if those early exchanges aren't mind-blowing it's all decent stuff, just rock solid NWA matwork where they move in and out of holds, coming up for air to tease Flair throwing a few punches out of frustration, only to rethink that strategy when Kerry shows everyone he'll throw a few back. This was a really fun Kerry performance in general. He worked with a real air of confidence early and at least felt like the sort of challenger you'd buy winning the belt, not least because he'd done it before. He never spent a ton of time working from below, but when he was on the defensive he was really good there too, especially with his big expressive selling and bumping. It's actually a shame that we never got more Flair working on top, which is something I find myself saying pretty often about him as champ. The stretch here where he took over was great stuff and he was damn near feral for a minute there, throwing nasty body shots, knees to the gut, working over Kerry's midsection while peppering in some great looking uppercuts and chops. They both used the sleeper hold to some major heat with Kerry's coming as a bit of a revenge spot, then Flair lands on his head off a mistimed Flair Flip in the corner and you're thinking "he's absolutely going to just get up and have Kerry whip him across the other side so he can do it again" and sure enough that's exactly what happened. I liked how Kerry briefly managed to apply the Claw to the head but other than that Flair avoided it the whole match, so Kerry switched things up a bit and flung on the STOMACH~ Claw instead. The commentator is aghast when Flair misses the kneedrop and Kerry puts him in the figure-four; the first time our good man whoever he is has seen that. To be fair it leads to a nice bit of legwork and YOU can never complain about Kerry giving Flair the Iron Claw to the knee, which quite frankly rules like fuck. In a legitimately shocking turn of events Flair doesn't even get the chance to go after Kerry's leg later. Not one single figure-four attempt. No shinbreaker, nothing. I thought for sure we'd see it and we didn't and that was pretty cool. In a roundabout way it protected him at least a little. Sure he escaped by the skin of his teeth in the end, but he looked tough as a bastard doing it and he never even went to his ultimate weapon. About 45 minutes of this aired and I can say that it never felt like I was sitting watching a 45-minute match. Which is about the highest praise I can give something at this stage of the game. Maybe I'll watch another Flair v Kerry match at some point in the next six years.