10 Things WWE Wants You To Forget About Ric Flair

6. He Only Spent One Year Of His Prime In WWE

Flair really only spent a little more than a year in WWE during his prime. Even then, Flair was 42 years old when he debuted in WWE in late 1991 and he was gone in January of 1993. He was still an entertaining performer by that point in his career, but you can't say that a guy in his 40s was at his absolute best. It would have been incredible if WWE got Flair ten years earlier. That didn't happen because he was too loyal to the NWA. When he started in WWE, management just assumed people knew him from NWA/WCW without ever mentioning the company. That's where he really built his name and his legacy as one of the best wrestlers alive. With big WWE names like Bobby Heenan and Mr. Perfect there to support him, it showed people that Flair was somebody that really was a big deal. Some of us never saw any NWA/WCW programing by that point, so we didn't know much about him. The unique thing about the wrestling business was that WWE refused to acknowledge where he was known from. It was like an elite athlete signing with another team except in sports you can mention what the other team was. In those days in wrestling you couldn't do that and even if you could, most companies never did. There was no way WWE was going to mention the competition on the air because then it might lead to fans watching their product. There's no question that Flair went on to become a big name as a successful NWA champion, but there's no telling how big he could have been if he worked for Vince McMahon prior to 1991.