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Ric Flair v Carlos Colon (10/16/82)

I think I may have said a word or two about Flair in the recent past, right here on this very blog. I've perhaps mentioned that the most interesting Flair matches - especially if they're lengthy - to me personally at this point will be against guys I've never seen him match up with before. Well I've never seen him match up with Colon and I was interested in seeing what Colon would bring to a title match (especially after seeing what he brought to an Abdullah the Butcher match), so I was looking forward to this. You have a pretty good idea how the match is going to be laid out and what Flair will do on his end, but how opponents fill in their part of the script can be pretty intriguing if it's an unfamiliar opponent. Colon basically controls the first ten or so minutes by working the arm, and it's not spectacular but it is spirited and looks fairly nasty. The arm work gets dropped soon after Flair takes over, but then I assume we all saw that coming. Flair actually does some pretty nifty stuff working on top, like hitting a couple snake eyes (don't remember seeing him do that before) and another big delayed vertical suplex. Around midway through we get some legwork and Colon reverses the figure four, then applies it himself, and the last stretch is your big Flair run to the finish. There was some pretty great stuff down the stretch, the best being Colon absolutely fucking Kurt Angling Flair head first into the ring post about six times in a row, with Flair taking every shot like a nutter. Colon's cartwheel as his "drop the strap" moment is incredible, btw. The crowd goes utterly BALLISTIC and it's so infectious watching him get fired up like that. I'm gonna enjoy him a ton on this set, I can already tell. Flair grabbing a headlock as a way to transition into the finish is very Flair, but man I didn't expect the actual finish to be what it was. Goosebumps-inducing. Probably doesn't sound like I'm overly enthusiastic about this as a match, but I thought it was really good. Of the three matches so far it probably has the least re-watch value to me for reasons that are likely obvious by now, but it might still be the best of the three (like, I guess).