10 Classic Wrestling Matches You Didn't Know Bombed

10. The Ricky Steamboat Vs. Ric Flair Trilogy

This hurts.

Obviously, you want great wrestling to draw. Obviously, you want the thing you like to form a pattern of success, negating the need for a Lana Bobby Lashley wedding to appease the network that facilitates all of this. In a perfect world, you'd want Ricky Steamboat to arm drag Vince Russo from one end of the ring to the other and say "No, motherf*cker, I am ratings."

This isn't the case. The absolutely incredible Ric Flair Vs. Ricky Steamboat trilogy of 1989 - held in parallel with the peak of the WWF's golden age - wasn't a commercial hit. It didn't matter that they were unprecedented feats of conditioning, technical skill, in-ring intelligence and perseverance. It didn't matter that braggart playboy versus gritty, firecracker babyface was a scintillating character dynamic. It didn't matter that those battles were ardently pro wrestling matches that electrified the purists.

That, sadly, may have been the problem; the second match, phenomenally worked, is rendered a very slightly hollow watch, dwarfed as the men were by the cavernous, largely empty NOLA Superdome setting. The TV rating fared poorly, too, running against the blockbuster WrestleMania V.

The next major NWA WCW show that followed the electrifying WrestleWar blow-off, the Great American Bash, almost tripled its live gate (14,500 > 5,200) supported by WarGames and the more blood feud-oriented Flair Vs. Terry Funk programme.