Original subtitles

Nature Boy, Ric Flair.

They all want to be like the Nature Boy, but there can only be one.

Ric Flair, the self -professed dirtiest player in the game, a villainous playboy

who openly displayed attributes that the modern society viewed as evil.

He was cocky. He was arrogant.

I'm not like every other Tom, Nick, and Harry that walks on your program.

And he was great at making me hate his guts.

When I'm with that ring, I don't care about anybody but me.

He'd use every dirty trick in the book. He's the dirtiest player in the game.

I'm the dirtiest player in the game. Oh, my God. He could be incredibly vicious.

Now he's ugly.

Rick is a Scarface -like figure. Gold around my neck, Rolex watch around my

wrist, looking so fat.

He had everything that you wanted, and he reminded you.

I spent more money on spilled food than you made in the last six months. His

brand wasn't always family -friendly.

I'm four or five women every day of my life. Rick Flair, who was selling sex,

drugs, and rock and roll.

Mage was really living all of that. There was no pretend in any of it.

got to be born to death. The same woman every night.

Paying alimony to three women at one time was a lot of dough.

As a matter of fact, that's got to be some kind of a record, right?

I'm not changing my lifestyle.

It was weird because you kind of hated him, but you loved hating him.

He appeals to what human beings want.

We want to be the man.

To this day, if you say Ric Flair, the whole

audience will go.

Everything was just so over the top then.

He loved the glamorous life, and who doesn't?

Whether you like it or don't like it, learn to love it.

To be the man, daddy, you got to beat the man.

When you're Ric Flair, when you're the world champion, when you're all there

I mean, let's show them one time. Put that camera on this. Can you get

to show them what's happening right here?

Why are we so captivated by villains?

Villains are the people that drive stories.

You need people like me.

You know, essentially, if you think about any great movie or story that's

been told, there can't be a great hero.

Is he talking to me?

without a great villain. Target zero, right here.

The best villains are the ones who know what they have to offer and they're not

afraid to talk about it.

I want you to deal with your problems by becoming rich!

In an era defined by excess, Flair stole the spotlight.

The man!

You gotta understand, I'm a hip -hop child, right? So seeing somebody like

wear jewelry and had all the women and had all the cars, it's like, that's

up my alley.

He's not a demon. He's not a monster.

He's a very real man.

A man who is better than you.

Every great villain has an origin story.

You want to know how I got these scars?

And Ric Flair is no different.

They all want to be like the Nature Boy.

But there can only be one.

So just how did he become the Nature Boy?

I think I was born in a nature war, much to the dismay of my parents.

I grew up in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I can remember as a kid I liked

watching wrestling on a Saturday night.

My birthday present every year would take me to the wrestling matches.

I'm adopted and couldn't have been adopted by two finer people.

Parents were both so smart.

My dad a double doctor, my mom a master's.

But I didn't inherit any of their genes.

To say that I was difficult would be an understatement.

I can remember one night when I was in seventh grade, I tied the sheets

just like you see in the movies.

Got into my friend's Pontiac, who had borrowed it from his dad, who didn't

a driver's license.

Then we headed over to a girl's slumber party.

Just ended up with me in jail at 6 a .m. on Father's Day.

It was an experience, but you grow up fast.

Got me to a place where the judge said to my parents, it's either military

school or boarding school.

So my parents found a real nice boarding school.

There's a lot to be said for going to boarding school in terms of the

responsibility that you have to carry on your shoulders to grow up.

Either make it or you don't. I mean, a lot of kids just rely, go back and fall

down on their family's name.

All the people in that school, 90 % of them came from very wealthy families.

So I saw the lifestyle I wanted, I just had to figure out how to afford it.

There wasn't really much to fall back on. I wasn't going to be a doctor.

So I just found another way to make it, and I'm just happy and lucky that I

wound up in wrestling.

In 1972, Flair was a far cry from becoming the Nature Boy.

I met Vern, Vern Gagnon.

AWA champion and the promoter and the owner of the AWA, the American Wrestling

Alliance, who I'd met before because the son and I were friends in high school.

He looked at me and said, yeah, we'll see what you got.

And that's how it all started.

You've got to know how to fall. If you don't know how to fall, you're going to

get hurt. And if you're hurt, you can't wrestle. And if you can't wrestle, you

don't eat.

It's that simple.

During the era in which Ric Flair came into wrestling, there weren't a lot of

trainers better than Vern Gagne.

We had to run two miles the first day, and then 500 free squats, 200 crunches.

Two hundred!

In 30 -degree weather and a barn.

Once I got through that, I felt I could do anything.

You got Mr. Charisma, Mr.

Exhaust, and Ric Flair, and you know who I got in my mind? I got the boy!

Conway with the funny looking hairdo. Everything we know about Ric Flair

up is that he did get into trouble.

And I think it was realizing that the stuff he did that got people so riled up

had a real purpose in the world of professional wrestling.

Ric had been wrestling for a couple years and he

was still figuring out who he was.

Nothing stood out about Ric Flair. And you've got to stand out to make money.

You've got to stand out to have some kind of character that people are going

remember.

He was kind of unspectacular.

You know, we were driving 3 ,000 miles a week back then.

I'd met this guy in a bar, shocker, right, that told me he had a plane and

could fly us. So we've been flying with the guy for about a month.

The plane crash came in 75, October 4th.

We ran out of gas at 6 ,000 feet, about a mile and a half from the runway.

The first engine pinned.

He reached down to pull reserve. There was no reserve gas.

Second engine pinned.

The next thing I do, I was getting put in one of these old military ambulances.

I just remember them saying, I think we're going to lose this one.

I thought they were talking about me.

Violet died.

Valentine and Bob Bruggers were paralyzed.

I broke my back in three places.

I didn't think I'd reveal the rest like that.

He has this horrible plane crash that he's somehow able to survive.

And while he's in the hospital, it forces him to take a step back early in

career and to think about what it is that he wants to do with this thing.

I'd lost a lot of weight. I went from 255 to 180 while I was with a broken

Rick probably sitting there knowing, I can't be in the ring, I can't go out and

be myself.

How do I turn this into a positive? What can I change?

That's when he starts thinking about the Nature Boy Buddy Rogers.

Buddy Nature Boy Rogers strutting around the ring.

In the 60s, the Nature Boy Buddy Rogers had a strut, but he had great promos,

especially for the day. He was cocky, arrogant.

To a nicer guy, it couldn't happen.

He had his shiny sequined ring gear and jackets and things like that.

Ric Flair, who was a big fan of his and a student of the game, probably took

that and was like, man, I could make this a hundred times better.

That's how it all started with an H -boy.

I don't think that you could have a better example of a phoenix rising from

literal ashes of an airplane.

Jim Crow world champion.

The U .S. belt, the world tag belt doesn't make any difference. The new Ric

Flair.

He almost died. He broke his back. He came back. And he said, it's not enough

for me to be Ric Flair. I have to become the Nature Boy. Here I am, looking

better than any man alive. The most gorgeous human being on the face of this

earth. In 1978, I felt pretty comfortable with myself.

The Nature Boy thing was kicking in.

Once he realized he was the man, I think that's where that evil persona really

took over.

One of the biggest stars in wrestling today. He knows it. He's probably one of

the biggest egotists. The presentation was all part of the package.

Rick walked in dressed to the nines, hair perfect, and had a swagger about

and a strut about him.

You can see that slightly cocky walk that he has.

Prior to Ric Flair, professional wrestling wasn't the sort of job that

showed up to in a suit.

So when you see somebody getting off of a team bus, and for those, like, 90

seconds that they're being trailed by a camera, they have put on a three -piece

suit and a nice watch and a pair of sunglasses, there's a little bit of Ric

Flair in all that.

We're talking about styling and profile.

The most expensive stuff available.

I saw Joan Hewitt, and I was going to be better.

Diamond ring wearing, kiss stealing, wheeling dealing, limousine riding, jet

flying, son of a gun.

He had everything that you wanted, and he reminded you that he had everything

that you wanted.

Rick stood out and was different than everybody else every single night.

I dress myself in alligator shoes. I wear a $15 ,000 Rolex.

Rolex owes me a commercial, man, a free one.

Rolex win.

Ric Flair is full of himself, and that's what makes it easy to boo him. But when

he says, like, you wish you had what I have, he's not wrong.

Woo! Setting the world on fire.

Private jets?

You didn't know of people who flew in private airplanes.

And Ric Flair did this on the regular.

He was simply the personification of excess in a decade defined by

and greed.

I think the 80s were an ideal time for Ric.

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous on TV, shows like Dynasty and Greed is Good,

right? Greed, for lack of a better word, is good.

Ric Flair was the Gordon Gekko of wrestling.

This is what all of them are wearing on Wall Street.

If you had Michael Jordans, you were Ric Flair -like. If you were wearing Pro

Kids or Converses, you were just some wrestler he was going to beat up that

night. When I'm in that ring, I don't care about anybody in the whole world

me.

He understood what a villain is supposed to do in the ring.

The villain getting his butt kicked in the right spots is what makes a match

work. I can't help but feel that Dusty has it right here and now. You have to

make a guy look like he's a guy that can beat you for that world championship.

The toss into the turnbuckle, grab the bottom buckle, flip over and run down

side of the ring is one of the most classic, watch the bad guy get where he

deserves moves.

And he brings him off. The flare on his knees when he do like that

and that hair be shaking.

He was begging off, please, please don't do it.

And the referee goes, oh, come on. And then the guy turns his back. And then

Flair jumps up and punches him.

Flair, thumb to the eye.

Upstate.

Would really make you say, wait a minute, man. You can't be doing that to

good guys.

And there's his hand again. Slam.

There he goes.

No,

he's ugly.

When he got on your good guy, he could do it and be incredibly vicious.

He calls himself the dirtiest player in the game. When you say that out loud, it

takes a little bit of the sting off of it, right? It's like he's telling you

he is.

He's cheating.

Yes, he's cheating.

Hey, shut up!

He was leaving with that title, and that's what made him a great villain.

I am still the world's heavyweight wrestling champion.

My dad being able to take you on this rollercoaster.

looked like he was about to lose, but being the dirtiest player in the game,

he's able to sneak one out. Just makes you hate him more.

Like you weren't even going to win.

To be the man, Daddy, you got to beat the man.

Being a man was about conquering. Ric Flair represented everybody's bully.

Things are great.

The first thing I want to do when I get up in the morning is paint my face.

His ability to talk shit is... unparalleled. He knew the buttons to

people.

It's kind of like that Floyd Mayweather disease where people will pay a lot of

money to watch this guy lose.

The whole world wants to shut Slick Rick up.

Bottom line.

Flair's obnoxious flaunting of his wealth and status.

made for a perfect rivalry with the blue -collar working man.

Oh, here he comes, the American Dream.

Dusty Rhodes, also known as the American Dream, was a working -class guy who

dared to stand up to the man.

Get a dream, hold on to it, and shoot for the sky.

I wanted to see Dusty Rhodes beat the tar out of him.

Dusty Rhodes was the everyday working man, the son of a plumber.

Who's your favorite wrestler?

Dusty Rhodes!

He represented the average guy.

That's why they loved him. That's why they connected with him. They felt like

they were him.

Dusty Rhodes, a man who has caught the heart and the fancy and the minds of

people everywhere.

If you were the regular fan rooting for the son of a plumber like Dusty Rhodes,

there was no one worse than Ric Flair. He embodied all of this capitalistic

greed.

This wasn't just a rivalry.

This was class warfare.

A working class hero taking on the loudmouth rich guy, flaunting his

I want you to jump out of that TV. Yeah, you bad.

Yeah, you bad, Rick.

It

was

the guy on the pedestal against the common man.

I'm tired of looking at that ad. I'll just go snip it up and throw it out to

fans. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He would talk about what a disgusting slob Dusty Rhodes was. Dusty Rhodes,

you're a country -talking fool.

But he knew that that was going to get under fans' skin.

I'm going to beat you half to death because I have to.

It was the guy living in the biggest house on the biggest side of town. The

other guy was the son of a plumber.

Blue collar, white collar, it was classic.

Now is the time that the talking stops and the fighting begins.

A battle of two giants in the wrestling world here tonight.

The war between Flair and Dusty set a new standard for what an epic rivalry

could become.

I wrestled Dusty in the Orange Bowl, and we had like 40 ,000 people.

We did huge business.

While Flair and Rhodes were in all -out conflict.

The U .S. was waging a Cold War against the Soviet Union.

The Soviets have been building their military strength. The Cold War went

on. A real -life issue that was playing out in the ring.

Sports Entertainment 101 is who was the U .S.'s enemy at this time?

Russia!

You just plug that in. It's very easy. There's that sense of pride and

nationalism. And if you have somebody that's representing that, people are

to cheer for that person.

So fast forward to Nikita Koloff taking on Ric Flair. And Ric Flair, even though

we hated him and he was this evil guy, he was our evil guy.

And as we have seen so many times, a double team.

Flair is locked in a cage. He's in peril.

And here's the American dream as he got into the ring.

In comes Dusty Rhodes, the American dream.

Coming to the aid of the world heavyweight champion is Dusty Rhodes,

television champion.

Dusty comes out, and he helps Ric Flair.

And right now, Dusty has cleared the ring, and there they stand.

And now we're going to see, Bob, look here. From behind, both the Andersons

working over Dusty Rhodes.

And he turns on Dusty Rhodes.

Rick is not worried about red, white, and blue. Rick is worried about green in

the end of the day. And now it's a three -on -one.

Attacking Dusty, breaking his leg, beating on Dusty Rhodes.

The violence seemed real. You thought, man, Rick really wants to kill Dusty.

All of us sitting there like, how could we have been so stupid as to trust the

dirtiest player in the game?

Fans were trying to climb the cage to get inside to help Dusty Rhodes.

Took us an hour to get out of the ring.

We had heat, man.

And it drove people crazy.

That face sure tells it all, Tony.

I'm the man that put Dusty Rhodes in a knee -high cast.

Dusty Rhodes!

It's only just begun.

With the sabotage on Duffy, Flair was a marked man.

He needed reinforcements, so he created a faction of henchmen.

The four Hearthmen!

That's what it's all about!

The masterminds! And all the talent! The new world game team champion!

Only not Anderson!

The new world team team champion, Kelly Blanchard!

Four guys that could work and talk.

Real simple.

We are the sons of professional wrestling!

Obviously, Rick being the leader of the group.

J .J. Dillon, a manager of the four horsemen.

Arne Anderson being that enforced.

And then you had someone like Ole Anderson, who was as mean as can be.

And Tully Blanchard, he was smooth.

He was the guy in the ring that maybe was the closest to Rick.

The horsemen were sitting around, having a little brewski, looking at a few

ladies on the beach.

All you have to do is go like this, and everybody knows what you're talking

about.

Rick Flair elevated every other member of that team.

The group embodied everything that Flair stood for. Money, women, and of course,

dirty deeds.

They weren't the biggest, they weren't the strongest, they weren't the fastest,

but they were the most tight -knit.

If I was a wrestler, I'd be Killer Mike, and I'd be the

fifth horseman. All for one horseman, and one for all.

The four horsemen became the blueprint to every faction to follow from that

point forward.

They were the first.

I was so influenced by it that I went off the rails in my career.

We are the generation I need. You make your rules, and we will break them.

Before DX, the NWO, and every iconic group that would follow, The Horsemen

revolutionized the industry.

Traveling from town to town, kicking butt.

We beat up who we want to beat up, when we want to beat them up. They just went

around saying, you know, they were the best, and they were.

There is no greater faction in the history of pro wrestling than the Four

Horsemen. With the Horsemen by his side, Flair was unbeatable, winning

championship after championship.

So by the late 80s, Ric Flair sort of starts to distance himself from the four

horsemen. As he distanced himself from the four horsemen, he kind of got back

his craft, which is being an incredible wrestler. And that kind of started his

rivalry with Ricky the Dragon Steamboat.

You're going to be mine. Don't make the mistake.

One hour time limit for the heavyweight championship of the world. And now

Flair, double arm suplex.

Great move.

His work in the ring was insane.

Flair was going 60 minutes a night.

60 minutes in the main event.

I am, if you ask the female audience, the 60 -minute man, pal.

So if you can hang in there, think about it.

People start to look at Ric Flair like, huh, I know this guy cheats a lot, but

you're really wrestling with an asshole. He can go, you know?

It showed the world that once you put the microphone down, Ric Flair is every

bit as good a wrestler as he says he is.

As his

fame and fortune continued to grow, so did his arrogance.

But the manner in which he did it made his presence undeniable.

Rick is a Scarface -like figure.

Say goodnight to the bad guy.

Because he appeals to what human beings want. We want to be the man. I'm rich.

I'm famous.

I'm unparalleled.

And for today, I'm the man.

Rick Flair is the reason I sit here right now with a Rolex on my arm and a

,000 Mercedes outside.

It's not that I thought that that's what I needed to be cool. He was cool, and

that was everything he had.

I think secretly, deep down inside, we all wanted to be that guy, but Ric Flair

was the epitome of that. A part of us is like, wow, it's flash, right? It's

wealth. It's all of the things that a lot of people would aspire to in real

life.

The girls over here are hollering.

He wanted to be the guy that got all the girls. When you think of him, that's

just the thing that is attached.

I tell you, the lifestyle of this man never ceases to amaze.

Hulk was selling milk and cookies.

These are the very best vitamins on the market.

Ric Flair was selling sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

Hulk Hogan had cartoons.

But what he didn't have was the ability to walk in any club. And every woman in

that club instantly think, I'm going to ride Space Mountain tonight. You don't

have to go to Disney World to find Space Mountain.

It's right here.

I just made it up one day.

One night a woman just screamed out, it's like, it's like Space Mountain.

And they see it and it was like national news.

And I got to do this for you. When you get on Facebook, you'll be like this.

Drinks on the Nature Boy.

I spent more money on spilled food than you made in the last six months.

The Nature Boy's avarice lifestyle wasn't an act.

He lived it 24 -7.

Where does that character end? Where does the real guy begin? We don't really

know that at all.

It's who he truly was.

The Ric Flair character was so strong that I think it overtook his life.

By 1992, Flair had yet to style and

profile his way through the WWE.

At WWE's Royal Rumble event.

Flair outlasted 29 other superstars to win the WWE Championship.

It's Flair from behind.

Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

It was the pinnacle of his career and his life. The promo that Ric Flair cut

after winning the 1992 Royal Rumble and becoming the WWE Champion is the most

important Ric Flair promo there is.

I'm going to tell you all with a tear in my eye.

This is the greatest moment in my life.

Because he says with a tear in my eye, this is the greatest moment of my life.

He doesn't say this is the greatest moment of my professional life.

He says this is the greatest moment of my life.

It's the greatest moment of my life. It is a real acknowledgement that there is

nothing... more important to him than being at the top of his industry. And

includes family, and that includes friends, and that includes anything that

might happen outside of this universe.

That was his life. That's who he was. I think Ric Flair was 100 %

committed to pro wrestling.

I live and die and breathe each day of my life for this

business.

For 15 years, Flair's deviant actions in the ring fueled his lavish lifestyle

outside of it.

Everything I have is because my name is Ric Flair.

But it was getting out of control.

The line between the character and the man was gone.

I mean, it wasn't a gimmick.

This was the life that he ended up leading.

Come on up here, ladies. Let this camera get a little better look at you.

Jan, darling.

I didn't expect to see you for another week or two.

Mache was really living all of that. There was no pretend in any of it.

Do you believe these women? And now you know why I come in this television

station a little weary once in a while.

I have to fulfill all the dreams, the desires, the wishes, and the

lusts of thousands of young women all throughout this great country.

The best was in Baltimore when I woke up in the morning with two chicks.

She said, you threw your Rolex in a bowl of spaghetti last night at Sabatino's

and said you had 11 other ones.

His occupation has made it difficult at times to have a family.

Now he is in the final weeks of an expensive divorce.

Paying alimony to three women at one time was a lot of dough.

As a matter of fact, that's got to be some kind of a record, right?

Three women, same family, all moving.

Good Lord.

I am so high on being Ric Flair each day of my life.

You play that role enough, that's like a cop going undercover, and sometimes

they get so lost in it, they never come back.

I probably neglected my family a little bit, but...

It's been successful for me in promoting myself and making me a successful

professional wrestler.

He doesn't apologize for being who he is.

The Nature Boy is Ric Flair. Ric Flair is the Nature Boy.

The womanizer, the king, the man that makes wrestling go round and round.

I think I was very naive to it.

Just like this is my dad. He has bleach blonde hair. He brings his big gold belt

to show and tell, and that was normal for me.

I'm going to miss you guys.

Vince came to me and said,

I'm going to start going with youth. And I know they want you back because WCW

never stopped calling from the day I left.

You can stay and I'll have to push you down the card or you can leave on top.

And I said, I'll go back.

In 1993, Flair returned to WCW, but times were changing.

Thanks again, Rick. I know you're on your way back to Charlotte. Thank you.

In an era of grunge, darker and edgier villains were in the spotlight.

Suddenly, the flamboyant nature boy wasn't the man like he used to be.

WCW had started the NWO, whose entire cause for being was to strip down

and everyone that WCW ever held dear.

By the time the NWO started emerging and really blowing up and overshadowing so

much of the other talent, I probably didn't look at guys like Ric Flair the

a lot of other people did.

The man is more of a coward than he is a fossil.

And that was my mistake, and that hurt Ric.

You suck!

It's natural to say something if your feelings are hurt or you think that

been under -recognized or you haven't been appreciated.

When Ric was in the character of the nature boy, he could do no wrong and was

the most confident person in the world.

But the human behind that was much more insecure.

Ric Flair was put in positions where he was shown as inferior.

You don't change Ric Flair. You don't move Tom Brady from quarterback to tight

end. Guys winning the Super Bowl, it's the same thing with Ric Flair.

Guy's a 16 -time world champion.

When you allow the glory that a character receives to become

your own personal glory.

then any tragedy that that character receives also has to become your

tragedy. And that's a trap that I think Ric Flair found himself in.

I was broken.

I don't think but a few people understand how much that impacted my

know, trying to be written off.

This is the last Nitro on the Turner Network, and we're going out with the

As the doors of WCW closed in 2001, the question remained.

Was this the end for the nature boy, Ric Flair?

Forever, their names will be linked to greatness in WCW.

And tonight, he and Ric Flair are going to finish off Nitro.

I remember the night of the last WCW Nitro.

It was weird.

Seeing him come out in just a black t -shirt and a short mom cut just kind of

threw me for a loop for a little bit. I was like...

Oh.

You can kind of see in his face that, like, this isn't the Ric Flair I kind of

grew up with. He just almost looked like a shell of a former self.

That was

a small part of me thinking, like, damn,

this might be the last time you ever see Ric Flair wrestle.

I don't like anything about that last Metro, except that it closed.

Vince called me about a year later and said, what are you going to do?

I said, I don't know.

I hadn't thought about it. Right now I'm just going up to the country club at 5

o 'clock, depending on what kind of mood I'm in, sometimes at 4.

He said, oh, you want to come back to work? And I said, yeah, I'd love to.

In 2002, Ric Flair returned to WWE, but his trademark swagger that made the

Nature Boys so iconic was gone, and his confidence was shot.

I was down on myself.

I just walked away saying, God, you could do so much better. Why didn't you

it, Rick?

It didn't hurt, no pain, just anxiety, right?

I wrestled a couple matches where I couldn't feel my hands from anxiety.

I could pinch myself.

When you no longer think that you're the man, then the very building blocks that

created the Nature Boy kind of cease to exist.

A villain needs to have self -confidence. A villain needs to know

anything and beat anyone.

Once you take that away, the villain becomes vulnerable, and now it's not a

villain anymore.

Now that villain is just like you and me.

What Flair needed was inspiration.

You see, in this industry, just like in life, everything evolves.

And what you see in this ring before you is the greatest example of evolution

you will ever see.

Evolution was a new four -man faction, including main event stalwart Triple H,

legendary icon Ric Flair, and newcomers Batista and Randy Orton.

Evolution was based kind of on the four horsemen.

Four guys, dress nice, the ladies love them.

What made the dynamic of evolution so special is that they weren't all on the

same plane. You had Ric Flair. He's kind of the mentor. He's kind of looking out

for everybody.

That was one of the luckiest things I had early in my career was him.

Took me under his wing.

I learned a lot from Ric.

I was all for it, but it took me a while to figure out self -confidence issues.

He didn't have the confidence in himself, but...

Batista, myself, and Hunter had the confidence for him.

It's standing before you, Evolution, with all the gold!

And Rick was a part of something that was the top of the business.

So Rick felt big.

Woo! It's L .A., bitch! We're going down to the strip to pie that! Woo! With the

champ! Rick felt like, okay, this is on me.

I'm the top dog again.

Rick played the part, Rick was the part, and never forgot it.

Not at all.

In evolution, Flair found new life, doing what he did best, breaking the

I was a huge plus in my life, you know, to kind of be where I

was a year ago and kind of down on the business and, you know, not really happy

with myself and my role. And now things just keep getting bigger and better for

me. When he got that groove back, look out, man.

It brought new life into him.

I was back to wrestling full

-time, and it was fun.

He's been in our lives for so long, but he's been remarkably consistent.

With Ric Flair now in the twilight of his career, something unexpected

The bad guy had become beloved.

The level of respect that you have paid me is unbelievable.

My dad has always been a bad guy.

The difference is now he's beloved because he's that respected, because he

the industry.

So when it got to the end and you went, oh, he may not get to be that guy I love

to boo anymore.

And I love being the nature boy!

Nobody really wants to let that go.

to appreciate him now so much just for everything that he's done.

It no longer became about hero, villain. It just became about contribution,

which was as much, if not more, than any other name that you could

mention. The chairman of the WWE, Mr. McMahon, made the mandate that the next

match at Fair Lost, he would retire.

The next match that you lose, Rick, will be your last.

And Rick insisted that he needed to beat the best. Because to be the man, you've

got to beat the man.

Shawn Michaels, I want to wrestle you at WrestleMania.

And if Rick couldn't beat Shawn Michaels, then Rick didn't want to do

anymore.

From my standpoint, it was something that I really took seriously.

I could show the love and appreciation that I had for the guy that I watched

growing up.

It would be my honor to wrestle you at WrestleMania.

In 2008, Ric Flair's farewell match was a fitting celebration of an epic career.

Tonight we celebrate Nature Boy Ric Flair.

A look on Shawn Michaels' face tells a story.

He wants to fight.

My God, what a shot!

It's one of my fondest memories.

Over 70 ,000 fans.

Name their respects.

The greatest to ever lace a pair of boots.

I was blown away.

Like, to see the respect and have the farewell that he did.

It was incredible.

To have that reception was really the ultimate achievement.

The WrestleMania farewell closed an important chapter in the book of Ric

But the Nature Boy wasn't done just yet.

Last night, I wrestled my very last match at WrestleMania.

You shouldn't be sad about the fact that you're not going to see me out here.

You should rejoice in the fact that I have had the greatest wrestling career

in the history of pro wrestling.

Ric Flair's one -of -a -kind personality is still influencing society.

Dial him and profile him.

Perhaps no superstar in history has more influence on pop culture than Ric

Flair.

He is so influential, people doing the Ric Flair strut and

wooing during games.

I don't think I ever would have realized how much that would have transcended

and become such an amazing part of pop culture.

It

endeared

him to so many people. Post Malone wanted to meet him.

All those records are dope. All of those can be directly attributed to how Flair

made us feel. His relevancy is unmatched. There has never been someone

or hated but followed as Ric Flair.

He's such a GOAT that he was relevant to me when I was five.

He's relevant to me at 45.

That's a 40 -year span of being one of the absolute best villainous characters

in a sports and entertainment world.

I love women. I take that as a compliment.

He appealed to the different senses of entertainers and athletes that made you

continually like him.

I influence culture.

A two -time Hall of Fame.

The Nature Boy's incredible legacy inside the ring shines through a new

these days.

Charlotte Flair was built for the grand stage.

Bow down to the queen.

Known as the queen, his daughter Charlotte Flair possesses the same

traits as her father.

No one compares to me.

As good as Ric Flair was, how head and

shoulders he was above everybody at his time, I think the same goes to

Charlotte. My daughter does stuff now that nobody can do. This is incredible!

The best female athlete in the history of our business.

When you talk about the pride that Ric Flair has had... $1 ,000 shoes!

Big Rolex watches!

Now we realize that he's showing pride in what may be his greatest creation.

And it wasn't the alligator shoes.

It was Charlotte.

A 12 -time women's champion.

Well, I'm like, I'm 5 '10", I'm blonde, and I'm super athletic. What is there

not to like?

Oh, yeah, but my last name's Blair.

I am a franchise player.

Custom -made from head to toe.

A genuine superstar.

The greatest wrestler of all time.

That's what he always told me. You have to be unapologetic.

Blonde!

So what are we to make of the nature boy, Ric Flair?

You pattern your life after Ric Flair, and you'll be something.

He believed he was the best, because he was the best. I believe he was the best,

because he told me he was the best. It's a circle like that. It's weird.

Really hard to believe that so much man could be wrapped in such a good -looking

fact. He was cocky, he was arrogant, and he was great at making me hate his

guts.

He insulted us.

He made us jealous.

But above all, he always entertained us.

It doesn't matter if he's the dirtiest player in the game. It doesn't matter

full of himself he is. It doesn't matter if you want what he has.

He's Ric Flair.

With me, what you see is what you get.

Hasn't changed in 72 years.

He didn't think about it. He just did it.

I'm going to make you hate me, and I'm going to do it every single night.

Was my dad justified?

He's a 16 -time world heavyweight champion.

You tell me.

Diamonds are forever, and so is Ric Flair.