WCW Starrcade, Washington, DC
This was to be the payoff for a personal, worked-shoot sort of feud between Flair and Bischoff. There’s a whole ordeal from 1998 with this, where Flair got suspended or whatever from WCW in real life for missing a date and going to his kid’s wrestling tournament. He was out from April into September, when he came back in Greenville, SC, on Nitro for one of the great Monday night wrestling moments ever — honestly, maybe still the very greatest.
This is his first match since April, first on TV since March, and he’s in with Bischoff, who had a grand total of two matches ever to this point: Starrcade ’97 with Larry Zbyszko, and Road Wild ’98 teaming with Hulk Hogan against DDP and Jay Leno. Needless to say he was never relied on to do much, but Bischoff really was a great, hateable bad guy authority figure, one of the best to ever do that. He had a different approach to it than Vince McMahon; there were some similarities in that they were both wielding power like assholes, but McMahon was a raving narcissist bordering on madness, while Bischoff was just a slimy fuck in full control of every action.
The reformed Four Horsemen — now with more Dean Malenko! — are banned from the building. More of the build-up to this match included Flair “having a heart attack” and Bischoff having Flair’s son David beaten up and forcing a kiss on Ric’s wife.
Bischoff has said the whole thing became business, at least to him, and Flair played along with it and there were no huge problems or anything. And Flair’s way too much of a pro to “take liberties” here, so of course he does not. But the whole thing really did take a toll on Flair; he truly did hate Eric Bischoff for years, even down the line later when they were both in WWE. Bischoff coming in deeply bothered Flair. I think over the years they hashed it out to whatever degree but I don’t listen to podcasts and frankly haven’t wanted to pay attention to anything Flair’s said in years.
Flair just beats the shit out of Bischoff right from the get-go, and Bischoff starts screaming about his knee. Flair takes zero pity; instead, he just focuses on the knee. But it does turn out to be a ruse, and when Charles Robinson breaks them in the corner, Bischoff does a karate to the back of Flair’s head. He gets a bit of karate in and Flair blades, because why not, it’s still Starrcade to someone, what the hell.
But Flair comes back, gets Bischoff’s shirt off to Tony’s disgust, and can be heard remarking, “This is it, brother,” before he lays into Eric with the knife-edge chops. Flair drops Chuck Robinson for trying to interfere, then punts Bischoff’s nuts in the corner in the style of Goldust’s shattered dreams maneuever.
With Chuck still down, Flair gets the figure four on and immediately, the entire crowd look to the entrance for the interference. Eventually, yes, Curt Hennig — who has been absent a while — runs in, handing Bischoff a weapon, and Bischoff knocks Flair out with it. And Bischoff gets the three count.
It’s as good a match as it could really be, I suppose. Flair working matches like this is kinda fun because he can’t do the usual Flair routine — I love the usual Flair routine, but it is what it is — because the other guy obviously can’t do all that. So things like this and Flair-McMahon have their special little places in the world. This is not as good as Flair-McMahon for a bunch of reasons. First off, WCW weren’t going to put in the effort at producing a big, dramatic affair that the WWF would, and more important, Bischoff is a little crazy but not as crazy as McMahon. But it’s alright. You can’t expect it to be Good Wrestling. My biggest complaint here is just how little creativity there is in putting it together.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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