The Art Of Making A Graceful Exit (Or... "Wooooooooooo!")
Imagine you have it all scripted for you in advance - and you have but to act it out, as humiliating and painful as it may be, and you will be home free to "retirement paradise" (not quite Liberty 55 - but close enough! Give or take 4 years... Again, the number *4* - it will pop up again a few times here, rest assured! At least as many as... four times, yes! Wooooooooooo!)
Thus, it has been scripted for you and you simply play out - as rehearsed.
Rehearsals do not make it any less emotional, you know.
For you know that, once this gets "carved in stone" (or impressed against pay-per-view collective memory, really) it will be IT. The end of a storied career, an end that cannot be reversed this time. Because you've lost bogus retirement matches before and come back after a prolonged vacation; but now, nearing 60 years of age, this retirement match is FOR REAL! Wooooooooooooo!
And likely to be 4 EVER also, baby!
And so, after having outlasted ALL of his contemporaries (really: ALL and EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF THEM - including you, "Hogan!" - you DON'T know best! Ask Linda - your ex-wifey, not the one mentioned further down here...!)
After having collected more world titles than Vince McMahon can count apparently (the final count is 22 - not 16)
And after having wrestled them all and defeated them all, styling and profiling... This is it! Wooooooooooooooo!
This is the end, my friend, the end, my friend, the end.
I hope to see you again, my friend, again, my friend, again.
(Alex Llyod song - feel free to sing along now!)
I cannot believe though that anyone would agree to go along with this kind of scenario - especially when your role had it that YOU are the Dirtiest Player In The Game, the kiss-stealing, limousine-riding, jet-flying, wheelin and dealin sonofagun... YOU are the Living Legend, the Nature Boy, the one with MANY devious friends in the business, the leader of many heel factions, most notably the dreaded Four Horsemen (as well as a one-time "alliance to end hulkamania" and the last bastion of glory for the late WCW, the Magnificent Seven, no less!)
YOU are even called the Rembrandt of the Ring by some sort of authority in the field... And YOU have stated, just a few months earlier, that you would NEVER RETIRE... YOU are THE MAN - and have been so for most ALL of the thirty-six years that you have been in this business! Woooooooooooooooo!
But, on this night, you're supposed to lay down so your retirement can be made official. You will therefore NOT step away as you'd intend to at first, by simply coming in sharply-dressed and announcing it to the masses made up of adoring fans who rew up supporting you and enjoying each and every one of your performances. No, instead, you will have the "chance" to make that announcement after taking it on the chin one last time (someone's BOOT on your old chin, to boot...) and YOU will be the one taking a dive. All to simply legitimize what is apparent already anyway: you've become too old to keep this going anymore. You're past your prime and the only reason why you've hung on for so very long is because they took a fancy to you: millions upon millions of fans, for all of these 30+ years, HAVE LIKED YOUR STYLE! And profile! Woooooooooooooo!
But now, it is over finally. Your body cannot take this sort of punishment anymore; and it is time to call it quits. However, your employer wants to make the most out of everything and so he engineers a silly storyline, the "ultimatum storyline," so that he can milk your retirement for ALL that it's worth. He will allow you to retire with one final match on the purported "grandest stage of them all" (we all know the true grandest stage is the legendary STARRCADE held for so many years in December - not something barely 20 years-old held amidst March Madness and Easter!!! But I digress...)
But you are going to make that exit in ignominious DEFEAT - with a SUPER-KICK (nothing really super abut it though) TO YOUR JAW! And you've rehearsed this thing, and you've been on its receiving end before - but now, after going through the entire routine of the match, you know it is coming and you know it is coming for the FINAL TIME. But remember - YOU are the Dirtiest Player In The Game!!! There are, at least, a dozen different things that you could do to avoid being on the receiving end of this thing, keep the match going... Not just to roll up your unsuspecting adversary up for a quick 1-2-3 and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - but to keep the ol' career going too! Wooooooooooooooooo!
Doing so would be pointless though - and, even though you're recognized as the thinking man's wrestler, the smartest cagey veteran there ever was, someone who cannot be taken by surprise so easily and who certainly wouldn't stay in the line of fire if you knew what was coming... AND EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IS COMING AT THIS POINT... Even though you would have to be dazed, confused and wobbly in a very MAJOR way in order to be nailed with one of those pathetic (not patented) "HBK super-kicks" (hey, he's not the first to deliver them; and they were pathetic when the late Gentleman Chris Adams delivered them; they were pathetic when WCW's Glacier dude delivered them; they're still pathetic as HBK Shawn Michaels delivers them! A CHILD could avoid them OR BLOCK THEM - sheesh!)
YOU, the greatest of them all, still DO GET NAILED BY THAT silliest of finishing moves - and you lay down to gracefully make your exit from active competition...
Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo...?!?
Owtch!
A legend should not be asked to retire after falling to the dumbest of wrestling finishers, delivered not by a peer but by your number one fanboy, groupie and wanna-bee all wrapped into ONE!
This is just shameful and DISGUSTING - the most pathetic and POOREST bits of writing that I've ever seen in "sports-entertainment".
Ric Flair went along with it because of various reasons, some his own, most obvious to guess:
1) he needed the money, having gone through a nasty divorce... Sales from his "farewell show" in the form of t-shirts alone should be TREMENDOUS... Woooooooooooooooooooo!
2) he genuinely likes HBK - so he passed the torch. He was always a very generous performer; he'd put over midgets if he was asked to.
3) he lacked too much in the leverage department to push for a more "logical finish to a career-ending match" for his character, who was/is, after all, the DIRTIEST PLAYER IN THE GAME... He had been cheating openly SO MUCH AND SO OFTEN in his heyday, when the Four Horsemen were riding high - and now, he would play fair and square? Even Classie Freddie Blassie wasn't this illogical at his most SENILE - and he got there only some 20 years AFTER having actually chosen to manage the worst tag-team of all-time; the comical farce duo made-up of Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik!
4) he was so very tired of going "Wooooooooooooooo!"
A real good finish would have been former Horsemen, old allies of all sorts, even former valets and MORE Flair friends INTERFERING in the match... And if HBK is such a "great, great, GREAT wrestler" he could have withstood it all... And then, it would actually be a MISTAKE BY A FLAIR FRIEND that would cost Flair the victory!
THEN YOU TRULY CAN SAY: THE CAREER OF THE DIRTIEST PLAYER IN THE GAME IS TRULY OVER! And it ended the way it THRIVED - for 36 years in the AWA, NWA, WCW, WWE and in many other places too... Wooooooooooooooooo!
They were going to reunite all the old-timers anyway, on the very next night; just to walk the aisle, get into the ring and give Ric Flair a HUG?!? That is ALMOST as bad as bringing back Volkoff and the Sheik - just so the former could sing the atrocious version of his national anthem that he delivered countless times before... One more time, eh... Now THAT is NOT what the fans want, for sure...
The fans wanted to see a dignified end to the legendary Ric Flair's illustrious career - and they didn't get to see that AT ALL.
Instead, they got to see the equivalent of the rudest sacking ever - not a send-off but KICKING OUT of the business rather...!
The greatest of all-time, above mere "legends" and "icons", a "national treasure" as Dusty Rhodes said - and he retires in DEFEAT... And not even doing it as he did it when he was at his very BEST... No wonder fans, friends, family and Flair alike were ALL in tears even as the sad scene was playing out is final act.
No more Woooooooooooooos for YOU!
In closing - a loooooong mere "comment" that I left for one Linda Robin, rasslin expert, over at her (own?) wrestling-edge blog/site. Such a long comment that I had to slice it into four parts to get in there - and then the last part was delayed even further by the "flood control activated" (sheesh - as if I was a spammer! You will pay dearly for this insult - in the ring! Have your people arrange that with my people - ok?)
SO here it is - in it s ENTIRETY:
"RAW Is BAD" - I like the sound of that! Shall we have "Smackdown Is Stupid" to go with that...?
But come on now, Linda - Flair being so forgiving of HBK was NOT storyline stuff; it was Ric being himself and saying goodbye to all the guys. He was not being in-character anymore. had he been in-character at WM-XXIV, he would have had help from the outside then (like, say, Edge does now or... ah yes, FLAIR used to do it, in his PRIME! He needed the Horsemen to win his matches in his PRIME, but not when he was pushing 60?!? If you want to talk about BAD WRITING, blast that too, please!)
The fact is, Flair hasn't been Flair since he came back to the WWE. So forgive for not giving a damn if Batista is poorly written - or HBK, or anybody else! Granted, Batista's new attitude is a throwback to classic Horsemen heel attitude - and it would be legitimized if Flair had not embraced HBK and called him a "great, great, GREAT wrestler - and a better man" to boot! HBK is himself near the end of his career - and Flair wouldn't lose to anyone but him. Flair was on the OUTS - why in blue blazes would he ruin his own farewell party just to leave Batista with a legitimate heel turn storyline bit? Come on!!! Flair finally shed his mask in the ring - sort of - and it was GOOD to see the real Richard Fliehr in there.
Sure, the fan in me wanted to see the Horsemen reunite one last time, trash BOTH HBK AND MCMAHON, pass the torch to Batista and maybe 3 other guys as well (as HORSEMEN, not Evolution!) but it would have been tasteless and even worse than bad really...!
Thus, it was truly better this way; a tribute to the "greatest career in pro-wrestling" and "wooooooooo" (once again, Flair's own words from that fateful farewell night; the only time he truly flashed any signs of his former grandiloquent and vainglorious self - when he was a Horseman and in-character, of course!)
I will still hope to see Flair make appearances in the future - maybe do a little bit of what Classie Freddie Blassie did, up to a point. The fact is, Flair is WCW incarnate. So are the Horsemen. So are Sting and the Cruiserweights and Booker T... etc... As that is, Flair and the rest of them cannot stay in the employ of McMahon for too long. They shouldn't, anyhow... And if they come back periodically, it is a concession that Vinnie Mac allows, due to Triple H too, because it is "good for business" and what the FANS want to see.
And this fan would love to see Flair show up one more time, IN-CHARACTER, and entice a revolt against McMahon... ONE MORE TIME... Something not as BAD as the WCW INVASION either... Unlikely they will allow SO MUCH though: the lousy WWE has already retired Flair, the Cruiserweight championship title, the Horsemen legacy and WCW itself... They released Booker T, never brought in Sting, humiliated the likes of Goldberg and Scott Steiner *and* trashed beyond repair the nWo... In short, everything WCW accomplished was properly dismantled! All the way down to Ric Flair's tired old body itself - almost!
Let's try one "Owwwwwwwwwwwwww" this time...!
But as it is, the authors of this "Batista vs HBK post-Flair feud - with a bit of collaboration of Y2J in it" are not doing anything wrong; this sort of prolongs the Nature Boy's presence and influence in the ring, and that can be only GOOD - not bad!
Wooooooooooooooooooo!
Even if all of the participants -especially "Y2J" Chris Jericho- only want to have some of the legendary Nature Boy Ric Flair's greatness rub off on them - by proxy!
Nothing bad with that either - even the likes of Ravishing Rick Rude and Brock Lesnar have wanted that in the past!
Heck - Vinnie Mac himself has wanted it!
He got to lose twice to Flair - me, I will never even get that chance!
And I am simply not interested in jobbing to "Nature Boy Reid Flair" - whenever sonny's ready to taske on his Dad's legacy...!
Good luck with that, son!
Wooooooooooooooo!
So, ok, I squeezed in one or two more Woooooooooooos in there...
But it is over now; no more.
I'm serious.
Thus, it has been scripted for you and you simply play out - as rehearsed.
Rehearsals do not make it any less emotional, you know.
For you know that, once this gets "carved in stone" (or impressed against pay-per-view collective memory, really) it will be IT. The end of a storied career, an end that cannot be reversed this time. Because you've lost bogus retirement matches before and come back after a prolonged vacation; but now, nearing 60 years of age, this retirement match is FOR REAL! Wooooooooooooo!
And likely to be 4 EVER also, baby!
And so, after having outlasted ALL of his contemporaries (really: ALL and EVERY SINGLE LAST ONE OF THEM - including you, "Hogan!" - you DON'T know best! Ask Linda - your ex-wifey, not the one mentioned further down here...!)
After having collected more world titles than Vince McMahon can count apparently (the final count is 22 - not 16)
And after having wrestled them all and defeated them all, styling and profiling... This is it! Wooooooooooooooo!
This is the end, my friend, the end, my friend, the end.
I hope to see you again, my friend, again, my friend, again.
(Alex Llyod song - feel free to sing along now!)
I cannot believe though that anyone would agree to go along with this kind of scenario - especially when your role had it that YOU are the Dirtiest Player In The Game, the kiss-stealing, limousine-riding, jet-flying, wheelin and dealin sonofagun... YOU are the Living Legend, the Nature Boy, the one with MANY devious friends in the business, the leader of many heel factions, most notably the dreaded Four Horsemen (as well as a one-time "alliance to end hulkamania" and the last bastion of glory for the late WCW, the Magnificent Seven, no less!)
YOU are even called the Rembrandt of the Ring by some sort of authority in the field... And YOU have stated, just a few months earlier, that you would NEVER RETIRE... YOU are THE MAN - and have been so for most ALL of the thirty-six years that you have been in this business! Woooooooooooooooo!
But, on this night, you're supposed to lay down so your retirement can be made official. You will therefore NOT step away as you'd intend to at first, by simply coming in sharply-dressed and announcing it to the masses made up of adoring fans who rew up supporting you and enjoying each and every one of your performances. No, instead, you will have the "chance" to make that announcement after taking it on the chin one last time (someone's BOOT on your old chin, to boot...) and YOU will be the one taking a dive. All to simply legitimize what is apparent already anyway: you've become too old to keep this going anymore. You're past your prime and the only reason why you've hung on for so very long is because they took a fancy to you: millions upon millions of fans, for all of these 30+ years, HAVE LIKED YOUR STYLE! And profile! Woooooooooooooo!
But now, it is over finally. Your body cannot take this sort of punishment anymore; and it is time to call it quits. However, your employer wants to make the most out of everything and so he engineers a silly storyline, the "ultimatum storyline," so that he can milk your retirement for ALL that it's worth. He will allow you to retire with one final match on the purported "grandest stage of them all" (we all know the true grandest stage is the legendary STARRCADE held for so many years in December - not something barely 20 years-old held amidst March Madness and Easter!!! But I digress...)
But you are going to make that exit in ignominious DEFEAT - with a SUPER-KICK (nothing really super abut it though) TO YOUR JAW! And you've rehearsed this thing, and you've been on its receiving end before - but now, after going through the entire routine of the match, you know it is coming and you know it is coming for the FINAL TIME. But remember - YOU are the Dirtiest Player In The Game!!! There are, at least, a dozen different things that you could do to avoid being on the receiving end of this thing, keep the match going... Not just to roll up your unsuspecting adversary up for a quick 1-2-3 and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat - but to keep the ol' career going too! Wooooooooooooooooo!
Doing so would be pointless though - and, even though you're recognized as the thinking man's wrestler, the smartest cagey veteran there ever was, someone who cannot be taken by surprise so easily and who certainly wouldn't stay in the line of fire if you knew what was coming... AND EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT IS COMING AT THIS POINT... Even though you would have to be dazed, confused and wobbly in a very MAJOR way in order to be nailed with one of those pathetic (not patented) "HBK super-kicks" (hey, he's not the first to deliver them; and they were pathetic when the late Gentleman Chris Adams delivered them; they were pathetic when WCW's Glacier dude delivered them; they're still pathetic as HBK Shawn Michaels delivers them! A CHILD could avoid them OR BLOCK THEM - sheesh!)
YOU, the greatest of them all, still DO GET NAILED BY THAT silliest of finishing moves - and you lay down to gracefully make your exit from active competition...
Woooooooooooooooooooooooooo...?!?
Owtch!
A legend should not be asked to retire after falling to the dumbest of wrestling finishers, delivered not by a peer but by your number one fanboy, groupie and wanna-bee all wrapped into ONE!
This is just shameful and DISGUSTING - the most pathetic and POOREST bits of writing that I've ever seen in "sports-entertainment".
Ric Flair went along with it because of various reasons, some his own, most obvious to guess:
1) he needed the money, having gone through a nasty divorce... Sales from his "farewell show" in the form of t-shirts alone should be TREMENDOUS... Woooooooooooooooooooo!
2) he genuinely likes HBK - so he passed the torch. He was always a very generous performer; he'd put over midgets if he was asked to.
3) he lacked too much in the leverage department to push for a more "logical finish to a career-ending match" for his character, who was/is, after all, the DIRTIEST PLAYER IN THE GAME... He had been cheating openly SO MUCH AND SO OFTEN in his heyday, when the Four Horsemen were riding high - and now, he would play fair and square? Even Classie Freddie Blassie wasn't this illogical at his most SENILE - and he got there only some 20 years AFTER having actually chosen to manage the worst tag-team of all-time; the comical farce duo made-up of Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik!
4) he was so very tired of going "Wooooooooooooooo!"
A real good finish would have been former Horsemen, old allies of all sorts, even former valets and MORE Flair friends INTERFERING in the match... And if HBK is such a "great, great, GREAT wrestler" he could have withstood it all... And then, it would actually be a MISTAKE BY A FLAIR FRIEND that would cost Flair the victory!
THEN YOU TRULY CAN SAY: THE CAREER OF THE DIRTIEST PLAYER IN THE GAME IS TRULY OVER! And it ended the way it THRIVED - for 36 years in the AWA, NWA, WCW, WWE and in many other places too... Wooooooooooooooooo!
They were going to reunite all the old-timers anyway, on the very next night; just to walk the aisle, get into the ring and give Ric Flair a HUG?!? That is ALMOST as bad as bringing back Volkoff and the Sheik - just so the former could sing the atrocious version of his national anthem that he delivered countless times before... One more time, eh... Now THAT is NOT what the fans want, for sure...
The fans wanted to see a dignified end to the legendary Ric Flair's illustrious career - and they didn't get to see that AT ALL.
Instead, they got to see the equivalent of the rudest sacking ever - not a send-off but KICKING OUT of the business rather...!
The greatest of all-time, above mere "legends" and "icons", a "national treasure" as Dusty Rhodes said - and he retires in DEFEAT... And not even doing it as he did it when he was at his very BEST... No wonder fans, friends, family and Flair alike were ALL in tears even as the sad scene was playing out is final act.
No more Woooooooooooooos for YOU!
In closing - a loooooong mere "comment" that I left for one Linda Robin, rasslin expert, over at her (own?) wrestling-edge blog/site. Such a long comment that I had to slice it into four parts to get in there - and then the last part was delayed even further by the "flood control activated" (sheesh - as if I was a spammer! You will pay dearly for this insult - in the ring! Have your people arrange that with my people - ok?)
SO here it is - in it s ENTIRETY:
"RAW Is BAD" - I like the sound of that! Shall we have "Smackdown Is Stupid" to go with that...?
But come on now, Linda - Flair being so forgiving of HBK was NOT storyline stuff; it was Ric being himself and saying goodbye to all the guys. He was not being in-character anymore. had he been in-character at WM-XXIV, he would have had help from the outside then (like, say, Edge does now or... ah yes, FLAIR used to do it, in his PRIME! He needed the Horsemen to win his matches in his PRIME, but not when he was pushing 60?!? If you want to talk about BAD WRITING, blast that too, please!)
The fact is, Flair hasn't been Flair since he came back to the WWE. So forgive for not giving a damn if Batista is poorly written - or HBK, or anybody else! Granted, Batista's new attitude is a throwback to classic Horsemen heel attitude - and it would be legitimized if Flair had not embraced HBK and called him a "great, great, GREAT wrestler - and a better man" to boot! HBK is himself near the end of his career - and Flair wouldn't lose to anyone but him. Flair was on the OUTS - why in blue blazes would he ruin his own farewell party just to leave Batista with a legitimate heel turn storyline bit? Come on!!! Flair finally shed his mask in the ring - sort of - and it was GOOD to see the real Richard Fliehr in there.
Sure, the fan in me wanted to see the Horsemen reunite one last time, trash BOTH HBK AND MCMAHON, pass the torch to Batista and maybe 3 other guys as well (as HORSEMEN, not Evolution!) but it would have been tasteless and even worse than bad really...!
Thus, it was truly better this way; a tribute to the "greatest career in pro-wrestling" and "wooooooooo" (once again, Flair's own words from that fateful farewell night; the only time he truly flashed any signs of his former grandiloquent and vainglorious self - when he was a Horseman and in-character, of course!)
I will still hope to see Flair make appearances in the future - maybe do a little bit of what Classie Freddie Blassie did, up to a point. The fact is, Flair is WCW incarnate. So are the Horsemen. So are Sting and the Cruiserweights and Booker T... etc... As that is, Flair and the rest of them cannot stay in the employ of McMahon for too long. They shouldn't, anyhow... And if they come back periodically, it is a concession that Vinnie Mac allows, due to Triple H too, because it is "good for business" and what the FANS want to see.
And this fan would love to see Flair show up one more time, IN-CHARACTER, and entice a revolt against McMahon... ONE MORE TIME... Something not as BAD as the WCW INVASION either... Unlikely they will allow SO MUCH though: the lousy WWE has already retired Flair, the Cruiserweight championship title, the Horsemen legacy and WCW itself... They released Booker T, never brought in Sting, humiliated the likes of Goldberg and Scott Steiner *and* trashed beyond repair the nWo... In short, everything WCW accomplished was properly dismantled! All the way down to Ric Flair's tired old body itself - almost!
Let's try one "Owwwwwwwwwwwwww" this time...!
But as it is, the authors of this "Batista vs HBK post-Flair feud - with a bit of collaboration of Y2J in it" are not doing anything wrong; this sort of prolongs the Nature Boy's presence and influence in the ring, and that can be only GOOD - not bad!
Wooooooooooooooooooo!
Even if all of the participants -especially "Y2J" Chris Jericho- only want to have some of the legendary Nature Boy Ric Flair's greatness rub off on them - by proxy!
Nothing bad with that either - even the likes of Ravishing Rick Rude and Brock Lesnar have wanted that in the past!
Heck - Vinnie Mac himself has wanted it!
He got to lose twice to Flair - me, I will never even get that chance!
And I am simply not interested in jobbing to "Nature Boy Reid Flair" - whenever sonny's ready to taske on his Dad's legacy...!
Good luck with that, son!
Wooooooooooooooo!
So, ok, I squeezed in one or two more Woooooooooooos in there...
But it is over now; no more.
I'm serious.
Labels: Flair, retirement, WCW, wrestling, WWE
posted by Luminous (\ô/) Luciano™ at 7:27 PM
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