I completely agree. I really just went ahead posted the video more so to debunk why despite that Flair would still win this match, before someone voting Benoit could bring it up.
You didn't debunk anything, in fact, after showing your man actually losing to the other guy
for real the best you could do was say your
opinion was that you don't
think that it could or would happen because of this vaunted 'prime' you speak of. You showed hard evidence
against your claims and "countered" it with imagined conjecture...
Moving on to those speaking out their ass with regards to conditioning:
Here's a bit on the energy system continuum in the body real quick: The continuum includes ATP-Creatine Phosphate, Anaerobic Glycolysis, Aerobic Glycolysis, and the Krebs Cycle. The former two are anaerobic and the latter two aerobic. As duration increases, there's increased contribution of aerobic energy systems. As intensity increases, the anaerobic energy systems are utilized more. So on one end of the spectrum you have anaerobic work like a hard sprint that can be maintained for mere seconds on the other end you have aerobic activities like walking which can be done for hours.
Flair's style of working is more towards the walking end of the above spectrum. His style is much less physically intense when compared to Benoit's with regards to energy pathway utilization. Likewise, in a kind of chicken and the egg scenario, the era Flair 'Prime' worked in was less intensive. Endurance means little when the work being done isn't very demanding. Hell we can all "endure" 8hrs of the aerobic activity known as sleeping but its not very difficult.
Conversely, Benoit worked a much harder more cardiovascularly demanding style his entire career and was conditioned to do so. His style was a melding of power systems. He required higher cardio output to sustain the intensity and he trained accordingly to maintain and enhance that ability.
Similarly, as was mentioned above, Benoit was booked to compete in shorter matches in a TV era that didn't have need of 60min matches all that often. This is not a negative against Benoit nor is it proof that he couldn't work those longer matches when they were asked of him as evidenced by his participation in Iron-Man matches and even his Royal Rumble win -with a time of 1:01:30.
Benoit has the higher work capacity and output on a per minute basis i.e., in this 45 min match Benoit is capable of working harder and maintaining a high intensity per minute, and when/if necessary could simply down-shift so to speak to match Flair's lower intensity work rate to recovery and maintain. So even if it were true that Benoit could only keep up his intensity for say 20 minutes --which it isn't -- it would be rather easy for him to work hard for 20min then actively recover at a lower Flair-esque pace for perhaps 15min then kick it back up into high gear to close out the remaining 10 minutes in the clutch. Flair on the other hand would be hard pressed to up-shift to match Benoit's intensity for any meaningful duration, if at all. Put all together and you should realized that Benoit has the overall conditioning advantage.
Lastly, as to this:
"There's no visual evidence that I could find that has a Benoit match lasting longer than 20-25 minutes"
Lack of "evidence" does not prove the opposite's existence or validity. What you claim is a fallacy in which the premise is supposedly true only because it has not been proven false, or supposedly false only because it has not been proven true. Were I to murder someone and you couldn't find the visual evidence to prove it so, that doesn't mean I didn't or couldn't have committed the crime. Lack of evidence only "proves" it is what it is: a lack of evidence.
