I like Tasty as a poster, even if some of his opinions baffle me. The one's posted here baffle me the most. Tasty, Flair didn't have anything to do with the mismanagement of funds from Jim Crockett Promotions... that was on the promoters. Flair made JCP stay afloat for nearly a decade longer than it should have. Ted Turner bought the promotion and turned it into WCW because of Ric Flair.
And it still never made any money until they brought in people to go above Flair on the card. WCW was losing money still in 1994, the last year in which Flair had a title run longer than two months. Then they stopped putting the title on him, started putting WWF guys in the main event and started making money.
As I mentioned before, Gagne had to create his own promotion to market himself. The NWA wasn't willing to put him over Lou Thesz, yet the NWA was willing to put Flair over Harley Race and make him the traveling world champion.
That's not even remotely close to what happened. Like lots of other wrestlers, Gagne was denied winning the NWA title because he wasn't liked by enough of the promoters. He set up AWA after he had already been a national star, so much so that national titles were invented for him due to his popularity.
By the time Flair came along, the NWA wasn't as political and there weren't as many territories to pander to.
And what's being left out here is that Flair was showcased on NATIONAL TV during his heyday and garnered the biggest ratings for TBS during his prime. Also, many of the gates drawn by Flair were as big, if not bigger than what Hogan drew in the WWF during that same time.
Starrcade in 1987 drew 85,000 people less than WrestleMania in the same year. That's not as big, nor is it bigger. It's actually quite a lot smaller. The cluster fuck that was WrestleMania 2 drew more to each of its venues than almost every single NWA show of the 1980s. One of those venues was headlined by Brutus Beefcake and Greg Valentine against the British Bulldog.
Now, I can concede Gagne was more popular because he was an Olympian and had notoriety before becoming a pro wrestler. Ric Flair was popular because he WAS a pro wrestler.
He was popular among a wrestling audience. He was not popular among a casual audience and never has been. When WCW signed Hogan, their ratings went up. When WCW signed Savage, their ratings went up. When WWF hired Flair, nothing happened because nobody who didn't already watch wrestling cared about Ric Flair.
Also, Flair had nothing to do with his run flopping in the WWF. Vince simply didn't want an outsider being the face of the WWF. Why would he concede Hogan, Warrior, and Savage to someone that gained popularity in the NWA?
Because he wasn't as popular as Hogan, Warrior or Savage. Look, you can choose to believe this all you want, but Hogan was made in AWA, by Gagne, and won the WWF title within three weeks of debuting. Then McMahon went with him. McMahon made Goldberg the World Champion. McMahon made Big Show the world Champion at a time when Rock and Austin were still there. McMahon cares about making money, and nothing else. Flair didn't do that.
Most of McMahon's champions were home grown, but that's because the other companies weren't making wrestlers that connected with the public in the same way. When Luger came along, he was pushed to high heaven. Why? Because he was popular with the audience. Flair wasn't, he was popular with a dated small scale audience and only when WCW abandoned that and started poaching WWF wrestlers did they start to make any money.
That had nothing to do with Flair as a wrestler and a popular draw. Hogan wanted to be the main event of Wrestlemania and he held the cards to do so... that's something Flair had no control over.
Hogan had the cards because he was more popular than Flair. That's exactly it. Then he went to WCW and held the cards there too.
Flair's accomplished more, drawn more money, and was more popular as a pro wrestler than Gagne.
No he didn't, no he didn't and no he wasn't.
I appreciate that it is a difficult truth for a lot of people to accept, but the fact of the matter is Gagne was a hugely successful money making wrestler in the 50s for other people, then he went and made money for himself. No company that has had Ric Flair as its featured performer has ever made any money whatsoever.
That is why when the territories were all clinging on to wrasslin' with Flair as champion, they all went to the wall and McMahon, who understood marketability hoovered them up. McMahon then later gave Flair a chance, had him win the Royal Rumble and become champion, and absolutely nobody gave a shit, so by the end of the year the title was in the hands of an unproven Canadian as that was seen as a more viable option than Ric Flair.