I Watched More David Flair Because of Bryan Turner's YouTube

Flash Flanagan vs. David Flair USA Championship Wrestling 2/23/02

ER: A few months ago we covered a David Flair match that took place just a week after this match, and it was the most "complete" I had ever seen Flair as a worker. It made me mildly curious to see more of him from this era, just to see how consistent these improvements were. Even with the steps forward I saw, I still think there was a ceiling for just how "good" Flair could have become, but working a bunch of old hand Tennessee guys almost surely would have made him better. The commentary says that "David Flair has come a long, LONG way in just two short years in this great sport" and it is true, because during his time in WCW I don't think I've ever seen someone look consistently less natural in a ring than he. The most important difference between 2002 David Flair and 1999/2000 Flair is that by 2002 he actually knows how to move around the ring. In WCW he had no idea how to get into position for anything, looked lost constantly, and always had the hunched body charisma of an assistant high school P.E. teacher who gets involved in a spot at his school's fundraising show. He was never going to move around a ring like Bobby Eaton, but by 2002 he was no longer moving around the ring like David Flair, and that feels like huge progress. 

Aside from finally being able to actually move like an athlete, Flair had gotten good at several other things. His opening lock up was surprisingly strong, I liked how he got into a fan's face and then resumed selling as he limply broke the count from the floor; he throws a really nice vertical suplex, and he had a couple of surprisingly good right hands while fighting Flash in the corner. As with Charlotte, his worst stuff happens whenever he apes his father. His chops are still bad, though probably not as bad as Charlotte's. He takes a fine Flair flip to the apron and gets clotheslined off, but then takes a baseball slide dropkick by forgetting to get close enough to the apron to take a baseball slide dropkick. He also throws his clothesline weirdly under the chest, but he throws it hard and that makes up for a lot of the awkwardness. Flash Flanagan is, of course, a consummate professional, and keeps a lot of this on track even though there were weird shifts around who was heel and who was face. Flash hit his awesome springboard legdrop, and him hitting the whiplash blockbuster on the ref when Flair ducked was the coolest part of the match. 

Well, maybe Flair taking the lowest arcing backdrop I've ever seen was more cool. I swear the man looked like he tripped on a curb while out jogging. Still, I would call it an overall win that in 2002 it at least looked like Flair was capable of jogging like a human man.