WWE Hall of Famer “The Enforcer” Arn Anderson recently took to an episode of his ARN podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including Ric Flair taking on Hulk Hogan in a career vs. career steel cage match at WCW Halloween Havoc 1994 just months into Hogan’s run with the company.
Anderon said, “Well, once you hotshot something — I mean, careers are on the line already. [Hogan’s] just settled in. You know, he’s just settling in. It’s hard to double back now, ‘Okay, a month later, let’s have a wrestling match.’ Well, the stipulation is somebody wins and somebody loses, and momentum is what you gain from that. But once you skip ahead to hotshotting, man it’s hard to double back.”
On if the match needed to be career vs. career:
“Yeah, why is it just one guy’s career? I mean, just you saying that makes it feel better. ‘One of us has got to go.’ You know, it feels like to me if that stipulation only applies to one person, then you’re going to do an end-around swerve job somehow to get out of it, right?“
On WCW bringing Flair back:
“They called him to come back, he didn’t worry them to death to bring him back. They started figuring out he’s — even though he lost the match, he’s still worth a lot more on the card than 90% of the guys that you had under contract.”
On when Flair should have retired:
“Oh God, I can’t make that call. Because that’s a decision that we all have to make. What’s going on in our real life, or what’s what you don’t see? What are the issues that — you know, whether it’s injuries or burnout or any number of things you could throw out there. You just had enough, whatever.
“I can’t make that decision, only he can make that decision. Well, I just think that you know, once — for me? Once I knew that I was permanently injured, not just hurt for a period of time? And that was it. When a doctor says, ‘You want to walk, or you want to be in a wheelchair?’ You want to sit, that’s your options. But you’re wrestling.’ So that made it pretty easy for me. And I was 37 years old, so — well, I had a 15-year career.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
