10 Things You Need To Know About Ric Flair's Original WWF Run

By Rich D. Latta II /

5. WrestleMania VIII - Losing The Championship

Flair, like everyone else in the wrestling universe assumed he was on a collision course with Hulk Hogan for WrestleMania 8. According to The Nature Boy, Vince McMahon and Hogan€™s relationship wasn€™t the greatest at the time, and with Hogan€™s Hollywood aspirations, the decision was made to pit Hogan against Sid, and Flair against Randy Savage. So for those keeping score, he went from one dream match, €œDOWN€ to another one. Interestingly enough, Flair didn€™t regret not wrestling Hogan in 1992. He would later more than make up for it in WCW, but his new opponent Savage presented working circumstances that Flair wasn€™t really comfortable with. Subsequently, he found out Savage was an insecure guy who wanted to practice the match. In Flair€™s mind this was blasphemous, but he went along with it anyway, citing the same thing happening to his friend Ricky Steamboat in 1987 with Savage. In €œTo Be The Man,€ Flair wrote, €œRandy drove Ricky insane, going over each move over and over again. When people praised the match as the greatest in World Wrestling Federation history, Steamboat would kind of shrug. He shared my belief that matches were called in the ring and on the fly, not laid out on paper.€ However, it was hard to argue with the method as the two men produced a stellar WrestleMania contest built around Elizabeth allegedly being with Flair long before she was with Savage.