How'd I miss this thread...
yeah Barr is right for the most part here. I wouldn't call it a burial by any means, but it did kill his potential as a top draw. Because the story all thru '88 was that Luger broke away from the Horsemen, found an ally to help him against the Horsemen, the ally turned on him to join the Horsemen, he gets a shot at Flair's title, gets jerked due to a blood loss rule, but gets his rematch at the biggest show of the year at the end of '88. Now by this point, you know that after all these mishaps, Luger's finally gonna rise above and finally beat his archnemesis. After a year of being screwed over by the Horsemen and being sold as the big man that's gonna take Flair down... he loses at Starrcade. Spends the next 2 1/2 years being a very solid midcard guy... and by the time he finally gets his big win, Flair falls out with Herd and rolls the fukk out. Luger never got ALL the way over like he was supposed to. He was never the most charismatic guy in the world, but he was over as all hell all thru '88... it noticeably declined after that. He was never that popular again.
That's one of the biggest issues with NWA/WCW... they had so many talents, great talents, at various different times in those years. But the people behind the scenes, including Dusty and Flair, made so many bad choices, they were never able to sustain those talents. Even at the height of the Horsemen's success/draw, Jim Crockett was stupid enough to play with Anderson & Blanchard's money, which led them to leave for WWF. It's stuff like that that's always followed the company, unfortunately, no matter who was in charge.