Hands of Stone
By Scott Keith on 30 September 2024
I sometimes don’t understand why agreeing to be a lame duck champ is held against Ronnie Garvin. It feels like a no-brainer for him to agree to the arrangement.
For one, he was already over 40, and this was likely his last remaining shot of sniffing a world title.
Two, even if this is more modern thinking, it was a chance for him to bet on himself and get over as someone who could be considered a main event tier guy moving forward.
Hard to see how that’d be a bad deal for him, yet it’s viewed as a dark spot on his career. I don’t get it. What say you and the readership?
It was such a tricky spot for him to be in. He had been primarily doing the tag stuff with Barry Windham and then Jimmy Garvin leading up to it , so it wasn’t like they had really reheated him leading up to the switch. If anything, JIMMY was the guy with the logical beef against Flair based on the Precious story and could have had a short fluke reign to pay it off. The other issue Ronnie ran into was the heels not wanting to put him over as champion, same as what happened to Steamboat a couple of years later. All unfair circumstances and out of his control? Yeah. Wrestling sucks sometimes. I actually wish he would have got the belt in 86 after watching him all these years now.