I find reading the archived Observers from the early 90s endlessly fascinating, partially because I’m finding all these crazy details I never realized before, and partly because of all the hindsight involved. For instance, the initial Hogan v. Flair main event of Bash at the Beach 94 was not as set-in-stone as you’d think. Even into June, the main event was presumed to be Hogan & Sting v. Flair & Curt Hennig, but Hennig was still locked into his WWF deal until September so they would have had to do some legal wrangling. Before that, it was going to be Hogan & Sting v. Flair & Rick Rude, but Rude refused to job for Hogan, and THAT led to him getting fired after the neck injury in Japan. Meltzer was very skeptical about the injury back then, although obviously Rude never wrestled again. With those possibilities shot down, we were left with Hogan v. Flair. Huh. Here’s his thoughts in 1994 on how to best use Hogan:
“Many would argue that just as Vince McMahon didn’t get the most out of the late 1991 Hogan-Flair series because Flair wasn’t cast as an outsider who wasn’t part of the WWF, that Hogan’s best role to draw money would be as an outsider who isn’t part of WCW rather than a new fixture talked about incessantly on every weekly television show.”
Give that man a cigar.