10 Wrestling Matches Everybody Wanted (But Nobody Watched)
7. Hulk Hogan Vs. Ric Flair In A WWE Ring
Sometimes, things can only be reconciled with cold, unbiased data.
While it seem unbelievable that fans weren't into the prospect of Hulk Hogan Vs. Ric Flair - a battle between the two biggest wrestling stars of the 1980s - they weren't. This was in spite of a potentially incredible character dynamic; upstanding, indefatigable powerhouse versus cheating bastard pure technician stamina machine was surely box office magic, but it wasn't. Their late 1991 house show failed to draw at the expected level, and as such, Vince McMahon didn't run it at WrestleMania VIII. People question why to this day, suggesting that most people wanted it, but they didn't. The numbers bear that out.
WCW fans were into it. Their Bash At The Beach 1994 main event smashed the promotion's pay-per-view record by drawing 225,000 buys, and it wasn't as if either man had refreshed their character to become fashionable again. They were in the same place as the two years prior, more or less, as was the business itself.
It wasn't a case of wrong time, wrong place; WWE fans were never into it, as evidenced by the pitiful rating for their Raw match on May 13, 2002. It fell by seven tenths of a ratings point from the week prior and posted the lowest non-holiday number since November 5, 2001.
It's almost as if WWE telling everybody that wrestlers from other promotions are worse than sh*t more often than not haunts them when they recruit from those promotions.