Valentine then formed a tag team with Ric Flair, with whom he twice won the NWA World tag team title and held the NWA Mid-Atlantic Tag Team Championship (between June 30 and August 22, 1977). They first defeated Gene and Ole Anderson on December 26, 1976 (who nine years later would become in storyline Flair's "cousins") in Greensboro, injuring Gene so badly that he had to be stretchered out. They held the titles until May 8, 1977, when the Andersons defeated them in a steel cage match in the old Charlotte Coliseum.