Ask 411 Wrestling: How Many World Titles Has Flair Really Won?

Hey there, welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling! I am your host, Mathew Sforcina, and I would like to announce that I’m taking over the 411mania Wrestling Hottest 100 for next year. Hell, I’ll give you a preview for it now!

1: Lisa Marie Varon
2: Shazza McKenzie
3-98: Who cares?
99/100: Floozies #1 & #2

So look for that next year.

If you have a question for me, perhaps asking what the hell I’m talking about, [email protected] is where you should send it.

But like most weeks, no matter how injokey my intro is, there’s still the glory of BANNER!

Zeldas!

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New York, New York: I went by how Wikipedia listed where they occurred, and thus am not sure off the top of my head what does and doesn’t constitute New York. But anyway, even if you add in Uniondale or East Rutherford, it still just makes New York go from big winner to super winner. So up to you guys.

Going Over Stars: Certainly there’s a major issue in the whole “No-one can be on John Cena’s level except John Cena” and “Big Show/Kane Perpetual Push Machines” when it comes to building stars. But again, while they are problems (the Cena one especially), they aren’t the main problem, which is the booking overall, rather than the Cena-centric booking. But certainly I can see the issues there.

The Trivia Crown

What am I? I’m a PPV, one where one title changed hands (and another was awarded). The top two matches saw one person with two managers and someone else with a manager who you wouldn’t have expected needed one given what he was doing. Every other match on the show had at least one ECW alumni in it (the last one is pretty obscure though). A few match finishes were moves off the top, a couple with weapons, one of them not at all pleasant, albeit with hindsight. A PPV that shares two superstars with Night Of Champions 2015, I am what?

No-one?

What am I? I’m a PPV, one where one title changed hands (DDP won the WCW World Title) (and another was awarded) (Scott Steiner won the vacant US title). The top two matches saw one person with two managers (Nash had Luger and Lix) and someone else with a manager who you wouldn’t have expected needed one given what he was doing (Randy Savage had a manager for his guest reffing). Every other match on the show had at least one ECW alumni in it (the last one is pretty obscure though) (Juvi, Hak/Bam Bam, Whipwreck, Konnan, Rey, Everyone but Arn, Scott Steiner). A few match finishes were moves off the top, a couple with weapons, one of them not at all pleasant, albeit with hindsight (Benoit’s swandive headbutt onto a chair). A PPV that shares two superstars with Night Of Champions 2015 (Sting and Booker T), I am what? (WCW Spring Stampede 99)

OK, I’ll make this one easier.

Who am I? I was on that PPV we just mentioned. I’ve been known as an object, an animal and a pretty boy. I’ve been in WWE, WCW and at least one over video game series. I’ve been associated with one of the longest reigning WWE Champions and one of the shortest, although not necessarily when they were holding the title. I broke a streak at Wrestlemania, I ended up breaking into WWE with a guy I wasn’t originally meant to be teaming with, and my run against Ultimate Warrior was fairly well received. I won at my MSG debut, I’ve worked ROH, and I’m batting 0.500 at Wrestlemania. Who am I?

Getting Down To All The Business

Brian has a simple enough question.

Is Tyler Breeze the Dolph Ziggler of NXT?

I don’t think so. Certainly the two of them share similarities, ranging from the superficial (They’re both got dyed blonde hair! They’re both 6’0!) through to the deeper (They’re both remarkable products of the WWE Developmental System wherein WWE can take the credit for most of their current skill sets and opportunities), but they aren’t directly comparable in terms of positioning or working structure.

Ziggler is one of several talents that is stuck in an endless loop of getting a whiff of an opportunity but then having it yanked away from him due to perceived issues with him, stuck in an upper-midcard role where they aren’t allowed to make a break and run with the ball but are still expected to put in all their effort and be grateful for the chance to be allowed to give 110%.

Breeze, on the other hand, is stuck in a holding pattern all on his lonesome wherein he is shunted aside constantly due to new toys being brought in all the time, and his lack of indy cred is causing him to just be there since he’s not getting all the buzz for being an awesome name we already know getting their shot.

Ziggler, while certainly a major name at the top of the list of guys on the treadmill who shouldn’t be in WWE, is just that, a name on the list. Breeze is unique, in that he’s not inexperienced enough to be justifiably kept in NXT but he’s also not moving up to WWE any time soon which is arguably a good thing right now.

I know I seem to be listing more similarities than I am differences, and that is somewhat true, so if you want to make that comparison go nuts. But I think the circumstances are different enough that it’s not all that apt. Ziggler is on top of the lukewarm pile, while Breeze is in his own little what do we do now zone.

Ross has a follow up from last week.

“94 yes. They needed a way to finally test the theory that people wanted Bret over Luger, ”

You reckon they expected that reaction and were just testing?

Or that they didn’t know which way it would go and left it up to that one audience?

I guess I’ve always suspected that Vince was probably thinking/hoping that the fans would be pro-Luger…

I would think that given that Bret got a juicy storyline with his brother’s heel turn earlier in the night, plus a sympathetic knee injury to play up, as compared to Luger’s cold entry into the Rumble without even getting a clearing the deadwood run, I suspect they were probably already leaning towards Bret. Had the reaction been very pro Luger they might have changed their minds, but giving the booking of the show I would be surprised if the experiment was “Is Luger Over Enough?” rather than “Is Bret Really That Over?”

But I have no proof, obviously.

Paul asks about NWOOT.

Been watching the Attitude Era RAWs on the Network and got up to the No Way Out of Texas PPV. My question is, if HBK injured his back at the Royal Rumble, why didn’t they say anything until No Way Out? Surely they could have built up a proper 4th man in the weeks leading up to the PPV, rather than doing the disappointing bait-and-switch on the night with Savio Vega?

Fun fact: They added the ‘Of Texas’ when someone noticed the initials.

Anyway, let’s say your Vince at the time. You know Shawn’s back is screwed, and you’ve got a big eight man tag match for the In Your House in the lead up to WM, to build to Austin/HBK. You initially hope HBK will be able to tough out a tag match, but he clearly can’t, and you have a few weeks before the PPV. What do you do?

Do you announce that your World Champion is injured and has to be taken out of the match, and spend a few weeks to build up a replacement guy for the PPV match, perhaps a guy who has history with Austin and has worked with DX in the past who, while not interesting right now, with a couple weeks, could be considered acceptable?

OR…

Do you keep saying the World Champ will be there, and thus the PPV will feature the Champ and his #1 Challenger facing off before your big show and then, having spent weeks selling that and getting all those PPV buys, you invoke ‘Card Subject To Change’ and sub in that same Austin/DX history guy, assuming that the few WM buys you might lose from the bait and switch will be compensated for all the NWOOT buys you wouldn’t have gotten if people didn’t think they’d see Austin/Michaels early?

The first one is more ethical, sure. But the second one is much more profitable. You can’t pull bait and switches all the time and expect to stay in business too long (WCW didn’t learn that), but the occasional one, eh, you’ll survive.

But I still maintain Vega made sense as a partner, he just didn’t have any heat. Certainly if you had built him up over those few weeks (have him prove he knows Austin, have him beat Hart in a strap match or something) it might have worked better, but it was still a decent brawl, just a scummy bait and switch that you sometimes ‘have’ to do in wrestling.

But hey, remember when Austin threw that trash can right into Billy Gunn’s face? Good times, good times… (2 Mins in)

HellloooNewman asks about the longest line in the park.

My question was inspired by all the recent talk about Flai’s 16 World Titles. I think that we’re all aware that the true number is well over 20, due to several unrecognized or phantom title changes. My question is two fold. First, what is Flair’s true number of world titles? Are there any videos of the non-recongnized changes available?

Oh boy, ok then.

So let’s start with the official 16, from WWE.com

WWE Championship (2 times)
1/19/1992, Royal Rumble: won 30-man Royal Rumble for vacant title
9/1/1992: def. Randy Savage

WCW Championship (6 times)
12/27/1993, Starrcade: def. Vader
12/27/1995, Starrcade: def. Randy Savage
2/11/1996, SuperBrawl: def. Randy Savage
3/16/1999, Uncensored: def. Hollywood Hogan
5/15/2000, Nitro: def. Jeff Jarrett
5/29/2000, Nitro: awarded from Kevin Nash

NWA World Heavyweight Championship (8 times)
9/17/1981: def. Dusty Rhodes
11/24/1983, Starrcade: def. Harley Race
5/24/1984: def. Kerry von Erich
8/7/1986: def. Dusty Rhodes
11/26/1987, Starrcade: def. Ron Garvin
5/7/89, WrestleWar: def. Ricky Steamboat
1/11/1991: def. Sting (became officially recognized as WCW Championship)
7/18/1993, Beach Blast: def. Barry Windham

So we’re up to 16. Now, let’s go through the NWA unrecognized title changes.

February 9, 1982. Ric Flair defends the NWA World title against The Midnight Rider. Rider wins the title, is announced as new champ. However, NWA President Bob Geigel challenges Rider, and insist he unmask, since NWA rules at the time said a masked man couldn’t be world champ. Rider refused, since if he took off the mask and revealed himself to be, for example, Dusty Rhodes who was suspended, he’d be fired. So Flair is awarded the title back.

August 29, 1982. Ric Flair loses NWA World Title to Jack Veneno in the Dominican Republic.

(This is the rematch, not the original title change)

However, Veneno refuses to fulfil the obligations as champion, as he wouldn’t defend the title outside his homeland. So, two days later, he is stripped of the title and Ric Flair is awarded it again. (The real story is different, but let’s go with kayfabe here)

January 6, 1983. Flair competes in a Title for Title match in Puerto Rico, defending his NWA World Title against Carlos Colón, WWE Hall of Famer and Matador raiser, who put up his WWC World Heavyweight Championship as well.

Flair then ‘wins’ the title back somewhere between the 21st and the 24th of that month, there’s no hard evidence when the match supposedly occurred, may well be a phantom title change, but hey, we’re adding in all the numbers, why not that one too?

February 8, 1983. Victor Jovica pins Ric Flair to win the title in Trinidad, but three days later the result is reversed because Jovica’s feet were on the ropes. Questionable as a title change goes, but let’s roll with it.

March 21, 1984. Ric Flair has lost and regained the title from Harley Race as seen in the original list. Then, on a tour of the world, Flair loses the World title to Race in Wellington, New Zealand, then regains it two days later in Kallang, Singapore. This title change was ignored for many years but WCW at one point retroactively counted it (so they could pretend that Flair’s world title numbers didn’t include the WWE ones). But as far as Flair’s reigns go, this is the most obvious lost one.

Now we start to get complicated.

In 1991, Ric Flair begins to be announced as WCW World Champion, which, when we get to the next issue, is considered a separate title to the NWA World Title. So he’s a dual world champion, apparently.

March 21, 1991, Ric Flair defends his title(s) against Tatsumi Fujinami in Tokyo Japan. During the match, Flair is tossed over the top rope, and thus, according to WCW, that’s a DQ and thus the later pinfall Fujinami scored was meaningless. But the NWA still acknowledges Flair losing the NWA World Title here, and regaining it at Superbrawl 1, May 19th, all the time still being WCW World Champion. (Was also briefly counted by WCW when they didn’t want to admit to the WWE reigns).

Flair is both WCW and NWA World Champions until he is stripped by both bodies, but importantly at different times, as he is stripped of the WCW World Title when he quits WCW, but the NWA doesn’t strip him until he signs with the WWF. So Flair goes to WWF, wins title twice, heads back to WCW. He then wins the NWA Title off Barry Windham at the 93 Beach Blast.

Then on September 13, 1993, WCW leaves the NWA. Flair is stripped of the NWA Title, but WCW declares Flair the WCW International World Heavyweight Championship. So is that a separate, world title? Let’s count it as such here! Flair then loses it to Rick Rude a few days later.

Flair moves to the WCW World Title, winning it at Starrcade 93 from Vader. H holds the title until April 17, 1994 when the title is held up after a match with Ricky Steamboat results in a double pin. Flair wins the title in the rematch four days later.

Then on June 23, 1994, he unifies the WCW World and WCW International belts in a match with Sting. So that’s another reign, assuming your still counting that title as a World Title.

Every other title reign from then on is uncontested, apart from the very last one when Nash gave him the belt, but that’s another story.

So then, 26 is the maximum you can get to by my count, unless you start counting other well known Dusty finishes. 21 is the traditionally accepted ‘real’ number, as you count the Venero, Colon, Race, Fujimami and WCW World Champion acknowledgement title reigns. (I would say 22 as the Steamboat thing is totally legit) Most of the later ones were on PPV/TV as it’s about semantics, and the early ones weren’t recorded.

But the readers might disagree with my math or want to include another one. Discuss below!

Here’s me on the tele again.

Keith wonders if we’ve been looking at things backwards.

As always, love the column every week. Keep on keeping on good buddy. Now on to business, we have all heard before that the heat between Savage and Vince was over an alleged affair Savage had with Stephanie (never proven, but often talked about), but has anyone looked into whether or not Vince had an affair with Elizabeth? There are shoot promos that often talk about Savage’s jealousy and his over-protectiveness to his wife, but could it be that after all this time, we find out that really it was Vince that was inappropriate and Savage had the bad blood?

Oh yeah, check out that chemistry!

Now then, this is the first time I ever heard of this, and looking into it, I found nothing on it. Certainly it wouldn’t make sense, as there was a deliberate blackballing of Savage from the WWF’s side, while when asked Savage would say he was open to coming back. If Vince did indeed do something inappropriate, you’d think Savage would tell everyone far and wide.

But the heat was always from Vince’s side, not Savage’s, so I don’t think this has any juice to it. Not even grapefruit.

William takes us from men and women engaging in wrestling in the non-traditional sense to men and women wrestling in the traditional sense.

Do you think that a “mixed championship tournament” would be an ideal way to give the “Divas’ Revolution” a bit more credence? Something along the lines of there being 8 spots made available for 8 teams of 2 – one male, one female. Outside of intergender tag matches (which would be sparse during the tournament), the males and females would not be involved in the same matches, but the members of the team with the most combined points at the end of the tournament would get a championship match against the Diva’s Champion and WWEWH Champion respectively. It gives them a storyline reason to support each other during matches and sort of act as each other’s managers etc. I know the idea is a little shaky (and I know Vince apparently doesn’t like tournament storylines), but I feel the D.R.’s main goal – eg the women being seen at a similar level as the guys, and being taken seriously by the guys and the fans – would be better achieved through an idea like this than just an inorganic announcement telling us that we all of a sudden have to view them as equals. Any thoughts on how the D.R. might be better achieved?

I agree that the DR has being horribly mismanaged. You can’t just come out and say “Here’s some women!” and expect them to suddenly sell out stadiums. Bayley/Banks isn’t main eventing a Network special because StepHunter said they were good, they have a storyline issue that has built over months and has fan investment.

The tourney idea is ok in a way, but I’m hesitant to tie each woman to a man, in that you want the women to be independent characters with different motivations and such, and having to equate every woman with a man seems like a backwards step. Sure, you can match up BAD and New Day members easily, but beyond that…

The problem is, as always, that to make the women on par with the men will take time and effort, like anything in wrestling. You can make women matter, tag wrestling, secondary titles, submissions, knock outs, anything in wrestling (within reason) can become over, provided you put in the hard yards by establishing, in this case, who each of these women are and what they want and why they are awesome. Having the start of this whole thing being so inorganic and flat with Steph just paring the women off was a horrible start, yes. But now we’re slowly moving into having organic storylines, maybe. Having Paige and Nattie join up as frustrated shooters will be a good start, you can have the division all in groups, that’s fine, provided the teams make sense. Team Bella makes sense (hey, if anyone turns as much as the Bellas do, it’s Alicia), BAD has some chemistry together, and Charlotte/Becky are there also. Now you have the groups interact in interesting storylines with time and effort into their presentation and maybe that will do it.

A Round Robin tournament would be a bit of a crutch that probably wouldn’t do all that much, but hey, no worse than what they’ve been doing for a while. Just don’t match them up like this was a box social.

And for Goddess’ sake change the damn belt!

Adrian From Ireland asks about Honky Tonk Man… Being a badass?

The 1st WWF match I seem to remember seeing in this part of the world involved Honky Tonk man and Randy Savage. It was late 80s Savage came down to the ring and Honky jumped him, tied the arms of his robes together and beat the hell out of him. This was quite shocking to me as I’d only seen British wrestling up to this point and Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks rarely did stuff like this. Does this incident ring a bell for you ?,/b>

I’m fairly sure the only tying Big Daddy got was when he wanted some Pad Thai.

…

See, because tie and Thai is…

Never mind.

Anyway, that segment doesn’t ring any bells with me, let me think.

Sadly I was unable to find a match where Honky took the advantage off the bat like that. Perhaps a reader remembers this?

Raza asks about who should be considered a success.

I always read/heard that the likes of Warrior, Bret, Shawn, Diesel, Sid, Goldberg, Cena, Punk, Bryan and recently Lesnar are regarded as failures WWE Champions in their respective eras in terms of the WWE/F ratings & overall business, then who should we called the successful ones and in which eras other than Hogan (late 80s) and Austin/Rock/Mankind (Attitude Era) which were obviously successful

The problem is that different reigns are judged by different parameters, and thus one man’s failure is another man’s adequate job. Plus what level is success to be judged? Was Bret Hart’s third reign successful? It set up Shawn’s run well enough, and it kept the house show circuit steady, compared to the freefall Diesel had. But compared to a Cena it’s a total failure, so?

Anyway, pretty much everyone before Hogan was successful, Sammartino and Backlund did well, Graham was cut short, and Morales was adequate enough. Certainly Sammartino could have been a true World Champion if he wanted the schedule.

Beyond that, Savage did fine, Yokozuna did well as a big fat heel, and Bret was ok. Then you hit Attitude, and the product becomes hot, and thus everyone does well, until Jericho becomes Undisputed champion and suddenly he’s the big failure. Hogan’s last run even worse, JBL died on the vine, and Del Rio didn’t do what they wanted. Everyone else other than Cena and Punk and Rock was ok, but Cena and Punk and Rock were successful at what they were intended to do.

But again, it comes down to how you judge success. But put a gun to my head, your successful WWF Champions are, in rough order of first successful run:

Sammartino
Morales
Graham
Backlund
Hogan
Savage
Hart
Yokozuna
Michaels
Undertaker
Austin
Rock
Foley
Angle
Triple H
Brock
Cena
Edge
Orton
Punk

But that’s just personal opinion, I don’t have the numbers.

Katamari Damacy asks about Dynamite Kid’s back.

I read that the reason the Dogs dropped the titles to the Harts was because Dynamite Kid hurt his back in late 86 so they had to get the titles off of the Dogs. How did the Kid hurt his back?

It was in a tag match in December 86 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. The Bulldogs were defending the tag titles against Cowboy Bob Orton and The Magnificent Muraco. Dynamite is in the ring with Orton, and he has to jump over Orton in a pancake spot, and mid move Dynamite’s back just went. Similar to when Nash tore his quad, sometimes you move a bit weirdly and you can pull a muscle. Footage actually exists though, so you can see it for yourself.

Nightwolf asks about odds Cena might not be able to overcome.

Everyone talks about how John Cena is one of the strongest wrestlers today. How do you think he would have fared against Andre the Giant?

Andre’s weight fluctuated a bit. But I think most everyone would agree that Andre was about as heavy as Big Show plus Edge would be. And Cena’s lifted them both, briefly. So he’d probably be fine physically in there.

Then you look at if he and Andre would get on, and I’m fairly sure they would. Cena, no matter what you want to call him, is a company guy, and all the charity work he does, I think Andre would have liked him.

And plus if Andre was around today, CenawinsLOL would be in full force.

So yeah, I don’t think Cena would be hitting press slams on Andre or anything, but Andre would let him hit the AA, probably.

Now Cesaro, that’s the guy who would toss Andre around like he was nothing…

*1/1000 of a Chandler*

Rahil asks if there’s a jobber of jobbers out there.

Has there been any wrestler in history who has never won a match ?????

Plenty, in that every year dozens if not hundreds of trainees have their first match, normally a loss or a draw, and then many of them bail due to it being too hard or painful or what have you, and thus never get a win. On the big stage, you’re having to find celebs, one and done wrestlers like Drew Carey, or people who are technically wrestlers but haven’t wrestled yet, like Lana.

But in terms of actual wrestlers? No. Even Brooklyn Brawler won a few matches.

And finally, Kendall asks why tag wrestling didn’t get any respect

My question is about the NWA Tag Team championships. As we all know, Flair was flown all over the world to defend the NWA singles title. Why weren’t the tag champs treated the same way? You rarely if ever saw The Road Warriors or the Midnights defend the belts in World Class or Portland, or Florida. I think they missed out on some great matchups like the Warriors vs the Von Erichs.

True, we missed out on a lot of great matches like that, but that’s because the NWA didn’t have actual tag champions until The Miracle Violence Connection.

The NWA didn’t actually have any ‘official’ titles outside the World Heavyweight and World Junior Heavyweight titles for decades. Those were the two titles the NWA controlled and had say over. Every other title with NWA in the name was a title that was pretty much owned by a member company, if you were in the group you could have whatever belts you like, as long as you didn’t throw shade at the World (and World Junior) titles. So you could have an NWA US or NWA TV or NWA Tag or NWA Women’s title and that was fine. That’s how there’s a bunch of NWA weight based belts in Mexico, and how Moolah could sell the NWA Women’s title to WWF.

So yeah, the Road Warriors weren’t NWA Champions, they were Crockett champions. There have been over a dozen or so ‘NWA World Tag Team Champions’ before the NWA finally set up their own in 92 with the NWA Tag Team Tournament, but since by that point WCW was pretty much the sole NWA member, most people don’t really remember beyond the MVC winning a really boring tourney.

So let’s end on a good match instead! See you all next week!