• Look Back In History
• Pmessages
• Quiz
• Stump The Staff
• Top Fifty
• Close

Greatness connects superstars Tom Brady and Ric Flair

Posted: Feb 6th 2021 By: Mike Mooneyham

What do Tom Brady and Ric Flair have in common?

Both can lay claim to being the GOAT (Greatest of All Time) in their respective athletic/sports entertainment endeavors.

While Brady is arguably the greatest NFL quarterback of all time, the “Nature Boy” is widely regarded as the greatest performer in pro wrestling history.

Brady, in the midst of the greatest season for a 40-plus-year-old quarterback in NFL history, has already won the most Super Bowls of any quarterback ever and he’ll be looking to add to that number this weekend. In comparison, Flair has won the most world heavyweight wrestling championships with 16.

Their combination of individual success and longevity have put them both on an enviable island in their respective sports.

Brady, who left the New England Patriots and the American Football Conference behind in the offseason and joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the National Football Conference, has been to 10 Super Bowl in 20 years, including five of the last seven.

He is the oldest player to be named Super Bowl MVP (age 39 in Super Bowl 51), be named NFL MVP (age 40 in 2017), and win a Super Bowl as the starting quarterback (age 41 in Super Bowl 53).

And entering this weekend’s Super Bowl 55 against the Kansas City Chiefs, at age 43 Brady becomes the oldest quarterback to ever lead his team to the big game.

Quite impressive credentials, but his grappling counterpart holds his own lofty position in the rarefied air of professional wrestling. During a career that has spanned an amazing six decades, Flair’s record of 16 world titles puts him front and center on pro wrestling’s Mount Rushmore.

No less than “Stone Cold” Steve Austin called Flair, now 71, “the absolute greatest of all time to ever lace up a pair of boots, and the greatest world champ of all time.”

It’s a sentiment oft-echoed by wrestlers and fans alike.

Brady has also shown that he consistently rises to the occasion and could be the greatest player to ever play the game.

“Tom Brady is someone who comes along maybe once in a lifetime if you’re lucky, not too unlike Ric Flair,” said Joe Dobrowski, a longtime fan of both Brady and Flair. “When you see him, he’s in total charge of the entire scene. He commands complete respect because he’s earned it. Both men never took anything for granted and always have looked for an edge how to improve themselves either by harder work or finding new mountains to climb.”

Both Flair and Brady, though, joined the pro ranks without much fanfare. But it didn’t take long for either to prove they were destined for greatness.

Brady was a relatively unheralded prospect coming off a college career where he’d served as a backup his first two seasons at Michigan.

The sixth-round NFL draft choice would become the Patriots’ starting quarterback in his second season in the league.

It took Flair only a couple years before he started turning heads and making fans and promoters take notice on the wrestling scene.
Ultimate winners

Flair’s popularity transcends the world of pro wrestling/sports entertainment. He has enjoyed iconic pop culture status with a reach that has extended to mainstream sports and beyond.

Nearly 50 years after his pro debut, the charismatic Flair remains a relevant figure not only in the pro wrestling world, but in pop culture as well.

His trademark “Wooo!” – a phrase he picked up after listening to “Great Balls of Fire” by Jerry Lee Lewis on the radio – can be heard in sports stadiums and wrestling arenas around the world.

Like Flair, Brady has been the ultimate winner in his field. His unparalleled success on the gridiron has made him into not only a football legend, but a national attraction.

“Tom Brady is playing in a Super Bowl for three different decades. Dude really is the Ric Flair of football,” tweeted one fan.

And like the larger-than-life wrestling icon, who was known for “stylin’ and profilin’ (“My shoes cost more than your house!”) and a flair for fashion, Brady, the husband of the world’s highest-paid supermodel, Gisele Bündchen, has become a fashion icon by association.

With greatness, though, often comes controversy. As the self-proclaimed “Dirtiest Player in the Game,” Flair has been embroiled in a number of highly publicized in-ring and out-of-ring incidents over the years.

Even Brady, with an outwardly squeaky-clean image, has experienced controversy over “The Tuck Rule,” Spygate” and “Deflategate,” even serving a four-game suspension in 2014.

Still, the Patriots, led by Brady, proceeded to win the Super Bowl that year, with Brady taking home the Super Bowl’s Most Valuable Player Award.

Big 10 ties

The two became fast friends at a gathering of celebrities five years ago celebrating Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh’s recognition of the Wolverines’ 2016 signing class.

“I’m a big fan,” Flair greeted Brady at the event.

“I’m a big fan of yours!” responded Brady, who even asked Flair for a picture.

“I’ll admit it,” Flair would reveal later to Sports Illustrated. “I have a man-crush on Tom Brady. Everybody loves to hate Tom Brady, but I love to love him. He is the best. He is so damn good. I wouldn’t be surprised if they win their fifth ring this year.”

Which Brady did, of course, by engineering the biggest comeback in Super Bowl history with a 34-28 win over the Atlanta Falcons.

Flair revealed at the gathering that he was ready to join the Wolverines back in 1968 after spending a wild weekend at the school’s Beta house on a recruiting trip with Michigan All-Americans Jim Mandich and Dan Dierdorf.

“I made up my mind I was never leaving Ann Arbor,” Flair said. “Wooo! In this town, you can stay all night and you can stay a little longer, so here I am, all these years later.”

Flair signed a letter of intent to play for Michigan and coach Bump Elliott back in 1968, but when his high school dean failed to provide the necessary paperwork, he ended up playing football under a scholarship from another Big 10 school. The late Mike McGee, then an assistant coach at the University of Minnesota who would become a future athletic director at South Carolina, recruited the burly Flair to play on the Gophers’ offensive line.

Flair didn’t graduate, though, eventually pursuing pro wrestling.

Brady played at the University of Michigan from 1995 to 1999, and was starting signal-caller for the Wolverines his final two years at the school.

Flair had given Harbaugh’s former team, the 49ers, a surprise motivational talk before a playoff game against the Carolina Panthers two years earlier when Harbaugh was coach in San Francisco.

Flair closed his remarks at Michigan’s National Signing Day party in trademark “Naitch” style

“Officially today, the Nature Boy is a limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’, kiss-stealin’, lovin’-old-blue and Michigan son of a gun! Wooo!”

Defying age

WWE Hall of Famer Shawn Michaels, in an interview with SI, chimed in on the similarities between Brady and Flair prior to the Patriots’ 2018 Super Bowl game with the Philadelphia Eagles, won by the Pats 17-10.

“Brady is still producing at a high level, and like Ric, as long as he’s producing, he’ll keep playing,” said the Heartbreak Kid. “Even if there are 30 seconds left and Brady is pinned on his own five, it’s still not over. Philadelphia has had a great season and I wish them the best, but you don’t go against the GOAT.”

Both Brady and Flair kept improving during their careers. Brady once said he was faster at age 39 than he was coming out of college.

And now, at age 43, he’s already taking about an even better next season after a full offseason of training and minicamp.

“As long as I’m playing, I want to improve and get better,” Brady said on a Zoom call last week. “I feel like next year is going to be a lot better than this year. I feel like I’ll be in a much better place mentally. I’m going to train a lot better this year, physically, next year I’ll be in a better place. As soon as this game ends we’re on to next season. We’ll start thinking about next year then.”

Flair enjoyed one of his best years in 1989 at the age of 40 even though he would compete an amazing two more decades.

“Any time you have two guys who are perceived as the best at what they’ve done, then naturally there are comparisons,” said Barstool Sports president Dave Portnoy. “Every guy wanted to be Flair and every girl wanted to date him, and that certainly applies with Brady.”

With Brady shooting for a seventh Super Bowl title, he’ll still be nine away from Flair’s 16 world crowns.

To document that fact, a line of T-shirts was released last year that proclaimed: “Ric Flair still has 10 more championships than Tom Brady.”

All, of course, in good fun.

“It’s one thing to be great yourself, but it’s another thing to make the people around you even better,” said Michaels. “Flair and Brady make everybody around them better.”

Like Flair at the end of his career, Brady has defied age and has continued to amaze.

“Leaving Foxboro for Tampa was a big risk, not too unlike Ric leaving the confines of Crockett Promotions and WCW to head for WWE,” noted Dobrowski. “Both bet on themselves proving that their way works. And both continue to defy what is normally expected and set the standard. There’s no better feeling that when you don’t necessarily prove your doubters wrong, but prove yourself right.”

Before a recent Bucs playoff game, Flair posted this motivational message to his football counterpart:

“Hey Tom. We all get old but so few of us get great. Remember, To be The Man, You gotta beat The Man, and you are The Man! Wooooo!”