My first real memory of Ric Flair was his match against Sting at Clash of the Titans I in March of 1988. By that point, I’d been a wrestling fan for a few years and had seen several “Nature Boy” matches against the likes of Dusty Rhodes and Nikita Koloff, but this match in particular has always stuck with me for it was the match that showed me just how good Ric Flair truly was as a performer. That night I watched Flair take a charismatic but ‘green’ wrestler in Sting and make him a superstar. He bounced all over the ring for Stinger, taking top rope bumps, doing his patented upside down flip over the top turnbuckle, and taking countless gorilla press slams over the course of the 45 minute match. After it was all said and done, the self-proclaimed, “dirtiest player in the game” had retained his belt and kept every last drop of heat from the fans, all the while making a new superstar with whom he’d feud over large portions of the next 13 years.
