Dream Casting The Rock's Ric Flair Movie
8. Harley Race
Flair's early rise to the top of the game obviously has to be framed around his early victories, which is why Ricky Steamboat has to be involved, but there's arguably an even more important feud that needs to be front and centre in the first half of the movie.
If we're looking at a sort of rise, fall and rise story approach, then having Flair's NWA feud with Harley Race that spanned a couple of years and saw the pair trading the belt. It was also one of the most entertaining feuds of the 1980s as Race offered a $25,000 bounty to anyone who could eliminate Flair from the NWA, Bob Orton, Jr. and Dick Slater attacked him and he was incapacitated by a supposedly career-ending injury.
It was obviously a work, but his return ahead of Starrcade: A Flare for the Gold in his own hometown and his victory to become champion again is delightfully pertinent when you think of what Flair would overcome later and the mirror with Charlotte's championship win decades later.
If John C Reilly was a decade younger, he'd be the guy - what with the hair - but frankly he doesn't look a great deal older than Race did in the early '80s and he could do Race's promo style well. Maybe a stand-in in the ring though, eh?