Flair v Nikita

Ric Flair v Nikita Koloff (JCP, 1/4/87)

I liked this a lot. I guess it's unfair to look at it this way, but at this point I sort of judge a Flair match based on how fresh it felt as opposed to how good it might actually have been. Or you know, something like that. As an example, I watched the Flair/Windham match from Battle of the Belts '86 a few months ago and I sat there thinking it was good and all but I'd kind of seen it a hundred times before. And look, this match was not something particularly unique. By '87 Flair wasn't really about to have a clean wrestling match where he starts out sporting the way he might've a few years earlier against Butch Reed in Mid-South, and this pretty much followed the broad template of that except Flair was a rampant shithead from the start. He didn't slowly go off the rails and start cheating. He was never on them to begin with and he never even feigned scrupulousness. You could probably call most of the momentum swings and major story beats and yet...it felt different enough overall that it stood out. Maybe the structure just worked for me. You knew Nikita was going to walk tall in the early stages and Flair wanted no part of it. I think he'd begged off twice by the 5-minute call. He got Nikita in the corner and threw a chop, Nikita slowly shook his head to demonstrate his IMPERVIOUSNESS and Flair just dipped out immediately. He did that at several points, another time when Nikita ran through him and pointed at his sickle arm. Eventually Nikita got fed up enough that he went out after him and clotheslined the post. Accidentally, I assume. Flair's work on it was brief but good stuff and I like how he was for using the ropes any chance he got. He had holds applied close to them often enough that I'm thinking they made a point of playing that up, how badly Flair needed whatever advantage he could get against Nikita. I liked Nikita's selling of it as well, letting the arm dangle low as if the shoulder had popped out and using his other hand to hit what was basically a running chokeslam. Nikita making his comeback by just throwing Flair shoulder-first into the turnbuckles was cool and led to some revenge arm work. In the back half Nikita gets busted open and Flair working the cut was another great if brief little segment. When he went for the running kneedrop and Nikita caught his leg I figured they were going for the route of Flair having his own hold put on him a little earlier than usual, but Flair countering it by just clawing Nikita's eyes ruled. Of course Nikita puts it on him eventually but I like that they teased it first, then let Flair get properly frantic after being busted open himself, before Nikita locked it in later. They had me biting on the roll-up in the corner with Flair's feet on the ropes because I was certain that was how they were for ending it, especially after Flair had just narrowly avoided being pinned with the sickle by rolling his foot under the rope. In the end he got DQd for chucking Nikita out the ring and in doing so might've came off tougher than had he won through shenanigans. This was really good, you know.