Im not sure what you're saying....are you implying the Bash At The Beach wasn't big, or that it should have been bigger ???
In terms of being big, that was the first time a WCW PPV had outperformed a WWE PPV held around the same time. WCW PPV in their early days entering into PPV did well, then dropped off considerably after Flair and many other WCW talents headed north, and were on an upswing with Flair back as champ but Bash At The Beach 94 was the first time a WCW PPV outperformed WWE. That was significant.
Their televise re match at The Aug 94 Clash Of Champions was the most watched wrestling match on cable TV that year, and for many years to come, even into the height of the Monday Night Wars (I believe the replay of DDP-Golberg shown on Nitro after being cut off the Halloween Havoc PPV in Oct 1998 topped it). The ratings were trough the roof compared to anything WWE was doing at the time. That was big.
Part of the perception problem comes from the fact that wrestling over all was in a decline after it's mid to late 80s super high. That decline showed in ratings and house show attendance in 1991 in WWE and WCW and continued, although it was much worse in WCW after Flair left in the summer of 91. Without Hogan on the scene WWE's numbers declined much faster although again there were soft signs in 1991 when he was still on top as Champ. For many this was "The Match" but it wasn't happening when wrestling itself was on it's high.
Another perception problem was the fact many fans believed they should have had an all out war in WWE. Flair had a huge arrival, immediately targeted Hogan, caused him to lose the title as part of his efforts not just to defeat him but to destroy him, then won the belt in about the most impressive fashion possible with his hour long Royal Rumble win, Mr WCW battling the entire WWE, including Hogan, and winning. All signs pointed to Hogan-Flair at WrestleMania. Once it became clear that Hogan would be leaving WWE after that point as the Federal Steroid Scandal grew larger and Vince started purging wrestlers either tied to the investigation or who had unrelated drug issues. It didn't make sense to have Hogan win the title with such fanfare and immediately leave. WWE also wasn't going to ask Hogan to put over Flair at W-Mania, effectively proclaiming him to be the best all time star (at least not without a firm return date and re match planned which was impossible to know at that point). While we got a great feud and match between Flair & Randy Savage we also got a lackluster clunker "Retirement Match" between Hogan & Sid. There were always fans that thought these two should have been allowed to tear the house down at Mania but it didn't happen.
Hogan-Flair in 94 also got considerable main stream press coverage which was rare at that point for wrestling (how many feature articles did USA Today run on Brett Hart that year ??). More proof the match was pretty big
In terms of the actual physical match, it was easily one of Hogan's best. Now Hogan was a bigger star than Flair (or anybody else really, he wrestling's biggest star period) but he was never among it's greatest in ring performers. While Brett Hart was playing an almost identical carbon copy of Hogan's kid friendly, moral high ground, character n WWE and was often criticized for not having the same level of charisma he was leaps and bounds ahead of Hogan as an in ring performer. So was Flair. Hogan-Flair at Bash At The Beach was very similar to Hogan-Savage at W-Mania 5 and was better than Hogan's best tilts with other memorable opponents including Paul Orndorff and Roddy Piper and way better than his matches against an ageing Harley Race and the collection on less talented big, fat guys he often faced such as Earthquake & King Kong Bundy. Hogan was a master at knowing exactly what he was capable of, matching it to the strength of his opponent, and creating an entertaining match without putting himself at risk for trying things he wasn't good at. Obviously when matched with better opponents skill wise like Savage & Flair he could do more than against the one dimensional super heavyweights or less skilled muscle heads like Sid but Hogan was never going to deliver a match longer than 20-22 minutes because he didn't have the skill set and athleticism for it. Flair had better matches in terms of strict In ring product vs Sting, Barry Whyndam, Ricky Steamboat, Terry Funk, Lex Luger, and even wrestled Brett Hart in a 60 minute Iron Man Match in early 1993 before leaving WWE. You would easily find Hogan on, and near the top of any list of Flair's Best Feuds alongside Dusty Rhodes, Savage & Sting, as Flair would be near the top of any such list in Hogan's career alongside Savage & Andre The Giant. In terms of actual in ring wrestling Flair would be at or near the top of any list of Hogan's Best Matches/Opponents but Hogan would be way down if you complied that list for Flair.
As far as which of their encounters was the best individual match, my pick was always the Clash 94. Despite the cheezy injury angle they worked an extremely intense, hate filled match that kept a fairly fast pace, especially by Hogan standards and had the crowd red hot start to finish. Bash At The Beach was very good, although I had seen these two Main Event in PGH in 1991 (as another poster said) and Ive seen their Madison Square Garden match on DVD from around that time, Bash 94 is very similar to those, with a couple of the same spots, mostly in the opening segments. Their Super Brawl 99 match was very good too but marred by a nonsensical crowd killing ending. Their Clash 96 match (their first encounter after Hogan is NWO and Flair is clearly playing the fan fave) is entertaining but is cut short (probably for TV time as it was a Live Broadcast).
On a side note, there has always been speculation that they got bumped from W-Mania because Vince didn't think they drew enough in their first round of house show matches prior to the Royal Rumble (although I guess he thought Savage would draw more against Flair, I never bought that). Living in PGH I loved attending the matches when either WCW or WWE came to town, although I mostly attended old NWA/WCW shows in the mid to late 80s (and saw Flair fill the Arena vs Dusty Rhodes in 1986 and set the all time single event attendance record at the Arena in 1987 vs Nikita Kolloff that was never topped, even though WWE held multiple Summer Slam PPV events here in the 1990s) . I can tell you at least here in PGH they were a much bigger draw than anything WWE had. I attended Flair-Hogan in 1991 (a poster here listed it as Nov 91 but I think it was Oct) and the arena had approx. 11,000 fans. In JAN 92 I attended a card headlined by Savage-Jake Roberts that had approx. 6,000 fans. Flair (by now WWE Champ) returned in March of 92 and headlined again with Hogan (in a tag match pitting Flair/Sid vs Hogan/Piper) and attendance was at 13,500. In June of 92 Shawn Michaels headlined and attendance was about 5,000. None of those cards were bad, but also none were televised or special events, just regular house shows but clearly having Flair v Hogan on the bill more than doubled the attendance here vs other recent shows without them.
