Was there any hope for Flair/Hogan?

Hi Scott- Blog poster Jabroniville here.

People keep bringing this up at various points in the Observer Flashbacks, as the Flair/Hogan numbers keep on falling and people are looking for explanations. Do you think there was any hope at all? Or was this just too little, too late?

Personally, as a ten-year-old fan at this time, Flair just seemed like some old guy from nowhere, because of course I was ignorant to WCW’s programming, and didn’t read the Apter Mags at that point. So I had no interest in him. But did even the established fans still think he had major credibility? And as we’ve seen in the Meltzer stuff, his star seemed to have been fading in WCW for at least a couple of years before he jumped to Vince’s team. Never mind that the WWF’s own fortunes had been diminishing by that point anyways.

Was there any way of salvaging this? Like, if Flair had been beating up Piper, Savage & Duggan instead of Chico Santana & Jim Powers, would he have had a better shot? Or were they just gonna fail no matter what was tried?

​I think that ultimately, Flair was just too damaged by WCW to be the top draw that Vince expected him to be, and then once he got to the WWF and became part of the system it destroyed whatever dream match appeal that was left. They could have easily milked the Piper feud for months, had Flair win the Rumble to get the title while avoiding Hogan, and then done the match at Wrestlemania. It’s not like Hogan v. Sid was any great draw, either. But yeah, ultimately Flair was a square peg in a round hole and fans just didn’t see him as a threat the way he was booked, outside of whacking Vince with a chair that one time. ​