WWE DVD Review: Ric Flair & The Four Horsemen

Released on 04/10/07, the DVD "Ric Flair & The Four Horsemen" is one of the most anticipated DVD releases in a long time from World Wrestling Entertainment. Everybody loves the Nature Boy, and nobody can ever forget his legendary clique The Four Horsemen, but can this possible top the Ultimate Ric Flair Collection set and the Four Horsemen materials included there?

Disc 1 opens with the usual slew of "don't try this at home" warnings and the usual commercials for other WWE products, including another plug for The Condemned starring Stone Cold Steve Austin. As hard as they are pushing this movie and simply by the fact Austin is in it, this may be the biggest hit for WWE Films to date. When the main menu pops up a familiar guitar refrain heard so many times during the WCW days is blaring from your TV, and if that doesn't already put a smile on your face the shot of the Horsemen in gold in the lower left corner or the highlight clips rolling in the upper right corner superimposed over a horsehead logo certainly will. Honestly I could watch this title screen and listen to this music all day long, but it's time to press play and move on; and doing so brings up the familiar "the entire world is watching" package that opens every TV show these days. Just for fun pause it once on your DVD player when Edge pops his head up - tell me that isn't the best shit-eating cocky heel son-of-a-bitch grin on his face SINCE the days of the Horsemen. If they ever started a new Riders of the Apocalypse, he'd have to be in it.

The horsehead logo pops up again and rotates on its side, and we see more highlight clips imposed onto it, and we hear from legends like J.R. saying that without the Horsemen there would be no nWo or DX, and Arn saying we lived like rock stars for real and it wasn't just a gimmick. This leads to Arn telling us a chance encounter with Flair was what got the whole thing started as we see a photo of the two together wearing championship gold courtesy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated. Anderson was working in Pensacola, Florida at the time, Flair was working with Jim Crockett Promotions, and Flair put in a good word with Jim to get Arn Anderson a spot. Arn was immediately compared to Ole Anderson, and honestly for the two not being related (or even really having Anderson as a last name) the resemblance in both looks and speaking voice was uncanny. Ole put this over through interviews and in the end they worked together as a tag team. Michael Hayes notes they had a hard road ahead trying to follow the legacy of Ole and Gene Anderson as a team, but that they still did it very successfully thanks to Arn's work ethic and desire. From day one it was apparent that Arn was a great talker too, cocky and braggadocious, filled with fire and venom. "The measuring stick for tough, is the Anderson brothers. If you think you're tough, try us on one time daddy!" Triple H and Stone Cold put them over as masters of in-ring psychology, working on one body part at a time to weaken a wrestler until he can be defeated, which Ole describes as "broken bones and broken teeth." J.R. says working with Ole helped Arn find "it" and become a star.

Next the focus turns to Ric Flair, showing him talking the talk and walking the walk with classic lines like "MY SHOES COST MORE THAN YOUR HOUSE" and bragging about how many of his custom made five thousand dollar robes he had in his closet. Of course Flair didn't just style and profile, he got it done in the ring. Early on they put over Flair as a "cousin" to the Andersons when he worked different territories with them, allowing them to all generate heat off each other. Tully Blanchard describes how it eventually came together since he was the TV champion, Flair was the world champion, and when you'd combine them with one or both of the Andersons for a six or eight man tag you could steal the spotlight at any house show anywhere just by putting all the angles together. Shawn Michaels puts over Blanchard as "the first cool bad guy that I ever saw" and we see a classic Blanchard promo about how great he is, why he can drive the cars that he drives, have a "perfect 10" like his valet Baby Doll, and so on.

J.R. goes on to say a hero is only as good as his antagonists, and without strong heels like the Andersons, Blanchard and Flair the guys like Magnum TA and Dusty Rhodes wouldn't have been such great heroes. This goes into a segment about TA, how he was viewed as the next big thing, and how Flair would mock him on TV for being a blue jeans and motorcycle jacket kind of guy while Flair was custom made from head to toe, with Flair even offering on TV to pay for a suit for TA just so he'd look like a professional: "I'll absorb the expense!" TA upped the ante by dropping a thousand dollars in his face on TV, saying I don't drive the cars you do or wear the clothes you do but I'll BET you can't beat me in the squared circle. This leads to TA putting Flair in his own figure four leglock and the Andersons having to run in the ring to make the save, after which they beat up Magnum 3-on-1. J.R. notes that this feud and working with them in the ring was what made TA into a big star. Blanchard talks about a match where the gimmick was Baby Doll slipping a roll of quarters into his hand, which he used to knock TA out and pin him to win the US title. Arn notes the important thing at the end of the night that somebody was gonna get hurt, and that it would be 4-on-1 or 4-on-2, but they'd always have the advantage. J.J. Dillon puts over how devestating they were as a group, a force to be reckoned with. Flair notes he worked with all of them as tag partners to set up whoever his next challenger for the title was going to be (presumably the member of the babyface team who got the pin).

J.R. seems to be taking a little dig at TNA in the next segment: "Flair when he was the NWA champion, back when the NWA title meant something" - ouch - "would travel to all the territories around the world to defend the title." We move on to the infamous cage match where all four men were in the ring, with the cage door locked, and they beat Dusty down and gave him "a broken leg." Arn says the building was so hot that night they couldn't leave the cage. "They tried to kill us! It took 30 minutes to go 40 yards to the lockerroom." Flair describes it as a "full scale riot in the Omni." From there it transitions into how Tully Blanchard got rid of Baby Doll and hired J.J. Dillon to be his manager, showing just how the Robert Roode Inc. gimmick should have been done and just how badly TNA botched it, with Dillon cutting great promos about how his job "as the administrator of Tully Blanchard Enterprises." You can say I'm the old timer living in the past if you like but here's something to ponder - there was no NWA or Jim Crockett Promotions on TV where I lived as a kid. It was AWA, the World Wrestling Federation, and that's it. I'm watching all of these angles after the fact, never having seen them when I was young, and STILL knowing they were done better than guys are doing them today. Even though he was only Blanchard's manager, he ended up being the mentor and father figure to the entire group, sometimes even the one to calm down their big egoes so that cooler heads would prevail, and he more or less became the manager for everybody.

Up until this point the Four Horsemen name hasn't even been mentioned on the DVD, and that's because none of them had used it to describe their group yet. Flair notes that Arn Anderson deserves all the credit for coming up with it, while a modest Arn states it was almost a fluke or an accident, a result of cutting promos in the studio for local television markets. One day they had 3 minutes to cover 3 matches, and all of the members of their group were defending titles, and "there just wasn't enough interview time for each of us to have one (of our own)." As Arn was standing there watching the whole thing unfold, he looked around at all four of them and the "four" stuck in his head - when the mic came his way history was made. "The only time this much havoc had been wreaked by this few a number of people, you need to go all the way back to the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!" For emphasis he held up four fingers. Tony Schiavone immediately came out from behind the camera when the segment was over, and told Arn he'd just nailed it, he'd just named the group. It was spontaneous, it fit, and it caught on immediately with the fans. They'd show up at the arenas and tapings with signs putting over the Four Horsemen name, wearing suits and ties with shades like their idols, and the crowds just kept getting bigger and hotter. Triple H puts over how different it was, how some managers would have stables of wrestlers, but in the case of the Four Horsemen it was four individuals coming together on their own with the common bond of being the best in the business and rolling like they were unstoppable, and how they weren't just "a hodgepodge of guys" but a truly defined unit.

Michaels put over the fact you could tell they were different by the way they dressed, the way they talked, and Triple H talks about how they were the personfication of violent corporate greed, and how they dressed like businessmen and heeled on the fans by living to excess the way average people could not. All for one, one for all, if you messed with any of them you messed with all of them. It's noted this also elevated Flair, because the Horsemen would be roadblocks to any challenger who was trying to take Flair's title. Austin: "Anybody who crossed them was going to be dealt with accordingly." Sam Houston, Ricky Morton, Robert Gibson, they all fell victim. Ole cuts a promo and says you can try us anywhere, inside OR outside of the ring, we're just that damn good, and you're not gonna like the results. He even says that by the end of 1986, Dusty Rhodes will have to announce his retirement. This of course leads to a segment putting over the Flair v. Rhodes feud as one of the greatest of all time, with the American Dream fighting for the everyman against the greed and excess that the Four Horsemen represents. Rhodes: "It was magic when we touched." Even though this feud is well documented on the Flair DVD set, you can't really tell the Horsemen story without including it here too.

Arn talks about how they bought five Mercedes at one time. Flair talks about how if he made $500, he spent $700. Their spending habits were lavish. You'd drive the Mercedes to the airport, get on a private jet, fly to Las Vegas, take a limo to party at the casino, workout, layout in the sun, take the private jet to wherever their next gig was - Des Moines, St. Louis, New York, wherever it was - work the match, fly back to Vegas and party some more. They'd get mobbed everywhere they went, crowds meeting them every time they arrived, following them everywhere they'd go. Teddy Long tells stories about how Ric Flair was the king of having good times at the bar, and how he had a lot of them with him. Hayes: "I saw a lot of midcard guys try to befriend the Four Horsemen, just to get the overflow of girls at the end of the night when the bar closed." Flair: "When you jump on the Horsemen, it's an all night ride!" Dillon: "We spent more time with each other than our own families because we were on the road so much." Blanchard: "When we had days off, we hung out together." Arn: "We were able to co-exist because we had the same interests. We thought individually, but we worked collectively for the success of the company and of the Horsemen." Flair: "We'd go out and watch each other's matches." Dillon: "We just had fun together."

Of course the great run of the original Horsemen couldn't last forever, and eventually Ole Anderson split off from the group, and when he split he had been such an evil man as a member that when he left nobody had his back. They quickly replaced him with Lex Luger. Rhodes: "He wasn't a great wrestler, to be in that group, but he kind of fit to be in there at that time." Dillon: "He certainly had the look, he was surrounded by such great talent, he was fortunate to be in the right place at the right time." Arn: "We literally had to teach him everything, but he had that young raw power, that heavy hitter who could stand in there with anyone." Flair: "We polished him up and we took off with him." From there we go into a fantastic segment about Jimmy Garvin's feud with the Four Horsemen, and how Flair was macking on his valet (also wife) Precious, and when Flair thought he had finally won the right to a date with her it was Garvin instead who showed up - entering when Flair had his back turned in the hotel suit, wearing a blonde wig and dress, and when Flair went to seduce her Garvin cold cocked him with a right hand. Dillon tries to run away from Garvin, gets backed up with nowhere to go, and Garvin shoves him suit tie and all into the pool. FANTASTIC. It's these kind of feuds that make this DVD so much fun to watch! This leads to the first ever War Games, which started out with Flair and Anderson, and it went two-on-one with Rhodes getting beat down until a babyface could get in to made the save, and it was so much drama going back and forth - but Rhodes puts over Anderson as the glue that held the whole thing together. Paul Ellering puts over the fact they beat the crap out of each other and the crowds were so hot for it it just kept getting bigger and better. Dillon notes how he'd be the last one in, and usually he'd be the one that takes the Doomsday Device or the physical beating. Everybody puts over Tully Blanchard as a heat magnet, the one guy everyone would hate even if they loved the rest of the Horsemen. Blanchard puts over how great he and Anderson were as a unit when tag wrestling, and how they would move the referee and the wrestlers around in the ring like a game of chess, always putting the pawns in the right places.

They talk about how the ball was dropped with Lex Luger, how the NWA wanted him to be their version of Hulk Hogan, and how this eventually forced him to split off from the group and feud with the group. Hayes: "One of their own, who had been privy to their secrets, had turned against them." Windham and Luger teamed up and became a unit, and chased the tag title gold all around the country. Flair would tease that Windham was going to become the fourth member, and eventually he did just that by turning on Luger and joining the crew. Rhodes: "He was the most natural gifted athlete to ever walk into our business." Windham: "Getting to join the team was a dream come true. I went shoe shopping with Flair, that was the wrong thing to do. I walked out with three pair of shoes that cost four thousand dollars! I had never bought a pair of shoes that cost more than $50 before that."

Of course when things are going good, they can't last forever. Flair: "The fact all Four Horsemen held the titles was not a statement by us, it was a statement by the promotion. If you go out there and make your opponent look so good, sooner or later they're going to figure out that you're great." Windham: "There was so much jealous and animosity, but it was working regardless of what anybody else thinks." Arn: "It became 5 of us against 35 other people who worked in the company." Flair: "They weren't making the best decisions about the people who were the key factors in the company." Blanchard: "Arn and I were underpaid, we were grossly underappreciated. In my unbashfal way I said you want to make $20 million you put Arn and I versus the Road Warriors. The payoff they gave Arn and I was a thousand dollars. J.J. got paid $3000. I was hot. Turner Broadcasting was trying to buy the company in the summer of '88. Crockett said be honest, I shouldn't have been. I got reamed on the telephone. They passed out the booking sheet, and I was no longer on the jet. I told J.J., do you want the belts tonight in Houston or tomorrow in Philadelphia, you decide. I turned around and walked off. We walked into Philadelphia, it was like walking into the freezer. Dusty wouldn't talk to me, nobody would talk to me. Arn gave his notice right there too. I told J.J. this is the end of an era in wrestling." Arn: "We always felt we were the nucleus of the group, and when we left we took the Horsemen with us." Flair: "When they went to the WWE it was devestating. My best friend was gone. It was over. O-V-E-R, that was it." Flair talks about them being bought out, and how he was left out of the loop with Turner, and how he quickly got sick of the politics and bullshit. Windham: "Jim Herd had no idea how to run a wrestling company." Flair: "He was an embarassment. He had no idea how wrestling could be construed, constructed. He actually thought he was smart - it was impossible."

They talk about Kendall Windham being tested out as part of the Horsemen as a replacement, how it never fit. They talk about Dillon leaving and the Horsemen have differing views about it - Flair describes it as very difficult, Windham says it was the beginning of the end, but the others say to the casual fan Dillon was just a figurehead. Flair: The company hired Hiro Matsuda." Windham: "The reason he got put in there, I really don't know." Hayes: "It was a real bad booking decision." Flair: "Terrible. Hiro was a great guy, God rest his soul, but he was terrible in that role. It was insult on top of injury." Hayes: "This was the point when they started grasping at straws." Steamboat: "That was the downfall, along with Flair and I taking off with our angle." Windham: "The matches I remember between Steamboat and Flair were just phenomenal." Windham: "It was time to come up for negotiation, they overbudgeted, I wasn't figured in - and then I ended up signing with WWE. I knew we'd never be together again." Flair: "The company made a turn they'd never come back from." This was where things went from bad to worse. Arn quit the Fed because his three year old son missed him so much and he couldn't take it. Blanchard got busted in a drug test by the Fed and Flair told him that WCW had revoked his contract offer, so Arn went back and he didn't. "There was a definite lack of chemistry, they tried a lot of combinations, it never really clicked."

Arn: "The people in charge saw dollar signs, they wanted to try to reform the Horsemen. We knew, Ric and myself, those things only come around every now and then, but they were paying us and that's what they wanted so that's what we gave them. It was the company's idea, not ours." Blanchard: "You can have C4 and nitro and all this stuff but none of it blows up if you don't have a blasting cap. That's what Tully was, Tully was a blasting cap that tied a lot of stuff together." Arn: "Sting was courted because it was so outlandish that he'd get in bed with us with all our history." Flair: "It was just an angle to go for a month." Arn: "Sting wanted to stay on his own and do his own, and we let him do just that." Flair: "He was our Ultimate Warrior, only he was ten times better." This of course leads to the Black Scorpion angle, where Scorpion was eventually unmasked as Flair, even though the original plan had been for it to be somebody else. Flair: "That was another tragic moment in my life." Triple H: "I didn't think they were using Flair very well."

More lineup experiments continued. Arn talks about Sid Vicious having all of the look but none of the skill. Windham: "He was embarassing." Flair: "No talent. He never should have been there. PLEASE put this on the DVD, this is exactly how I feel." Flair's contract was up, Jim Herd and him got into a war of words, and Flair left for the WWF with the Big Gold Belt over his shoulder. Windham was of course upset about this since he was supposed to be the next champion. This of course let to Heenan introducing "The REAL World Champion" on television and holding up the world title on WWF television. Windham: "It shut me down, I took it personal, there were hard feelings for a while. But Flair was trying to pay his bills, I was sore about it, and I never got my turn." Anderson: "I wished him well, but I knew what kind of loss it was for our company. It scared me the people in charge would let Ric Flair get away." Flair knew he wasn't being put over because he wasn't Vince's creation, stayed until his contract was up, and came back to WCW under new management. This of course led to ANOTHER attempt to recreate the Four Horsemen. Triple H on Paul Roma: "The job guy, from the WWE, what?" Roma: "Flair wishes he could be me, he wasn't as young and good looking as me. Did I fit as a Horseman, no I admit that, but I brought something else to the group." Triple H: "I have to tell you that was the weakest initial outing of the group of all time." Roma: "The Pillsbury Dough Boy Arn Anderson, the 97-year-old Ric Flair, riding a high they don't want to come down off of. I didn't go out and drink and party and act a fool, okay Ric, so I don't fit." Arn: "It was suits who didn't understand trying to interject guys into our group for instant credibility." Anderson: "When they break open the time capsule a thousand years from now do you think they're going to go DOT DOT DOT... Paul Roma?"

Suddenly the action freezes and we get a screen scroll about the night of October 28, 1993 when Arn Anderson and Sid Vicious got into a fight at a hotel, and Arn got stabbed 20 times. No kayfabe, no storyline, it just got real dark and real ugly. Flair: "I'm not gonna go into detail on that, I'm just gonna say it was unnecessary." Screen graphic: "Shortly after this violent incident, The Horsemen disappeared once again." Arn talks about building up to the feud with Ric Flair, how they had a match together at Fall Brawl. "I started to let him see life without Arn Anderson. When he looked around and wanted me to be there, I wasn't there." Once they reunited, they had a discussion about Brian Pillman, and decided to bring him into the Horsemen. They set it up with a tag match where Pillman was with Anderson, Flair was with Sting, Sting tagged out to Flair and Arn comes in, then Flair punches Sting and all three men jump on him. Arn: "Brian was in and we were off and running again!" From there they brought Benoit in. Arn: "I couldn't say anything negative about him even if I was lying. I would have loved to have had Benoit walk into that spot when Ole walked out." Unfortunately Pillman left and was replaced by Steve McMichael. Arn: "What Mongo lacked in wrestling skill he made up for in personality." Well Mr. Anderson, if you say so. Benoit: "Woman and Miss Elizabeth, they brought class, they brought great looks." Bischoff: "Woman wasn't going to take any crap from Debra, someone who had only been in the business for a cup of coffee." Benoit: "Their personalities clashed backstage, which of course made for some good TV." Next Jarrett became a Horseman against the wishes of Ric Flair. Bischoff: "He comes out in the goofiest looking outfit I've ever seen, he looked like a male stripper. Hopefully when they think back on the Horsemen nobody will ever associate Jeff with that organization."

From here we go to a rather sad chapter of both Horsemen and WCW history, when Arn Anderson was forced to retire due to a neck injury, and Anderson tried to offer Curt Hennig the spot only to have him turn on them and join the nWo. Arn: "I suppose it was poetic justice, we had done it to so many other people." Insult was added to injury when the nWo started making fun of Arn Anderson's emotional farewell speech on TV. Then a bad situation got worse when Flair and Bischoff got into a spat about Flair wanting to leave to see his son in an amateur wrestling match, and they started suing each other for breach of contract, and he was off TV for 6 months, which started the "We Want Flair" signs in the crowd. Flair: "Just ike Herd, Bischoff was the same thing, only a little bit more suave." Eventually this led to Flair returning in a big "welcome home" where the Horsemen were in the ring wearing tuxes, but you probably remember this best for Flair confronting Bischoff when he came out and screaming at him "YOU ARE A NO GOOD SON OF A BITCH. FIRE ME! I'M ALREADY FIRED! FIRE ME!"

Going into 2000 the end had come, for the final time in the Horsemen saga. Benoit: "Malenko and I left WCW and the Horsemen because of all the backstage politics." Arn: "I hope people can remember the way it was in the beginning, and it's no disrespect to any of those guys, but it just ended callous with everybody going their own way, and in the beginning it was about everybody sticking together." This wraps up the biograph part of the DVD with a retrospective look at their accomplishments, all of the WWE superstars of today putting them over, putting over Ric Flair as the limousine ridin' jet flyin' superstar he always said he was. Arn: "We left the business better than we found it, and as much as we chose this business, this business chose us." Ross: "The Horsemen were the first group to get national cable exposure." Flair: "If there's a promoter out there who's got a lot of big money they call us, because we pack arenas all over the world, because the people like to see the best wrestlers today." Steamboat: "They were a brotherhood." Ross: "The Horsemen were the foundation for every antagonist group we will ever see on television. They were the guys who started it all." Fade to black.

Of course that's not all though! Disc one is loaded with extras and promos, but the real money is on the classic Four Horsemen matches on disc two. To review each individual match would make this review twice as long as it already is, but you can hardly not take note of the value they add to this set: First Blood between Tully Blanchard and Dusty Rhodes, the previously mentioned Fall Brawl match between Anderson and Flair, War Games from Great American Bash '88, and so so much more. You could buy "Ric Flair & The Four Horsemen" for the outstanding career biography from start to finish, you could buy it for the matches and bonus features alone, but when you put it all together you have to admit that for all of WWE's faults and shortcomings when it comes to their Home Video department they've got FAR more wins than loses, and they've done it again successfully here. Two thumbs up for this oustanding two-disc set.