…continued from page two
Next up we get Lou Thesz losing the title to Gene Kiniski without any mention of WWWF spinning off of the NWA following Buddy Rogers loss to Thesz. Gene Kiniski has a kayfaberific promo from 1994 talking about his "shoot" win over Thesz for the title. It then gets even better as he says he lost the NWA title to Dory Funk, Jr. because he forgot it was a three fall match and gave up to Funk’s spinning toe hold thinking he had two more falls left. Yeah, kayfabe.
Dory Funk, Jr. is next and talks about his time as champion. I’m glad they put footage of Funk in as he is one of the most articulate representatives of pro wrestling out there. Next, we transition to Harley Race and his first reign as NWA World champion. To their credit, they talk about the controversy of Dory Funk, Jr. not dropping the world title to Jack Brisco. Brisco has always maintained that the truck accident Dory, Jr. had which took him out of the title change with Brisco was a fabrication to get out of dropping the title. There is a great clip of Terry Funk accidentally breaking the nose of referee Sonny Myers after winning the NWA title from Harley Race. I had always heard the story but seeing it was something else, that had to suck.
Terry Funk’s interview for this DVD is great. Vintage (sorry) Funk.
No mention of Jack Brisco or Giant Baba.
Next up is an extended segment about Harley Race. If you have ever wondered "Why Harley Race?" just watch this. He is the toughest, most bad-ass, mean heel and this is a really good segment with him. Now the DVD gets to what I’ve been waiting for- Ric Flair.
A pretty disappointing segment on Flair actually. There is a lot of history to cram into an hour long documentary covering 104 years. It is interesting that for the first time on the disk they acknowledge "other" world champions and show photos of Hulk Hogan with the old green WWWF title belt and Nick Bockwinkel with the big AWA belt. The narrator (I’m not sure who he is but he’s doing an excellent job) actually says "there are other world champions but many still regard the NWA World championship as the true world title".
Next up, Dusty Rhodes. Not a lot to say, pretty short.
The transformation between Mid-Atlantic to WCW is covered next and generalizes that the NWA title became the WCW World title. Of course that is not remotely true. The NWA title essentially split and went inactive for a period of time. Still, to many casual fans at the time, it appeared that the WCW World title was the NWA World title so they are not following the NWA title at this point but instead, the WCW title.
We get a quick overview of the Flair era changes mentioning only Steamboat and Luger. I don’t think they acknowledged Kerry Von Erich or Ron Garvin, if they did I missed it. They are now talking about Flair coming to the WWF and bringing the physical world title belt with him. In a weird gaff, they insinuate that WCW had to find a new champion- they did Lex Luger defeated Barry Windham in a steel cage for the belt but not according to this DVD. In revised history the narrative says "WCW had to find a new champion and found one in the first African-American World champion Ron Simmons". In other words July 1991 to August 1992 didn’t exist. (They did show a clip of Big Van Vader wrestling Ron Simmons but never acknowledge him as champion here)
Ron Simmons, Vader, Sting, and Flair’s reigns (basically 1992-1994) are summed up in one sentence. Well, to be honest they spend about two minutes summing up all these men.
Then things get way strange. They mention that WCW pulls out of the NWA at this point (true) and then insinuate that a bunch of people hold a belt and none of it is a big deal (they show clips of Paul Wight as The Giant, Hulk Hogan, Sting, and Ric Flair during this 30 second clip). It’s straight from that to the Monday Night Wars.
Concluded on page four …
