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Wrestlemania, Woos And Partying Like A Rock Star

Posted: Mar 25th 2008 By: CMBurnham

From the feather boas to the line at Space Mountain, Ric Flair's persona is the closest thing to rock royalty the wrestling world has ever seen (insert Van Hammer joke here). But how much of it is Flair's real personality?

"Every bit of it," Flair says. "Much to the dismay of a lot of people, especially my first two wives. As a matter of a fact, I've said publicly that the Rolling Stones could never have hung with the Horsemen. I'm sure of it."

I'm talking to Flair over the phone the week before Wrestlemania and what could be the legend's last match in a sport-defining career full of chest chops, low blows, and figure-four leglocks.

But my biggest memory of Flair isn't from the ring. It's from one of those rock star moments where I was hanging with a friend at a THQ party back when they had the WCW license, and my buddy started talking to Flair about some bar the wrestler likes to frequent in the Bay Area. Just so happens my friend was one of the bartenders there, and the two hit it off immediately. Flair walked off after a few stories only to return with three women. The Nature Boy pointed at my friend and said, "You're a bartender--tell the girls some funny stories."

At this point, my friend (who will go nameless to protect the not so innocent) turned red and completely froze. All he could do was point at Flair and say, "This guy's a nut."

This guy's a nut? He blew it. Flair put his arms around two of the girls and left right there. From that point on, the phrase "This guy's a nut" has become legendary with all our friends, as our night of potential partying with the hardest partier in the business ended almost as soon as it started (we never even made it in the limo!).

"When I say we've had a lot of fun, I want to say that I haven't done anything that I shouldn't have," Flair says about his party lifestyle. "I'm talking about drinking and partying and enjoying the notoriety that went with the territory. I just had a lot of fun, and it was so easy back then just because back then, there wasn't a door that wouldn't open for us, and I took that time to walk through the door. I'll go to sleep tomorrow night, then the next night, you find a reason not to go to sleep until the next night. I could find something to do in Hays, Kansas, and that's pretty hard to do."

Back when I was a kid, there were two types of wrestling fans: Flair fans and Hogan fans, as the debate between the NWA and the then WWF was heated beyond belief. The scale started to tip (at least on our block) with one word--Wrestlemania. Entering its 24th year, Wrestlemania has helped transform the sport of professional wrestling into an entertainment spectacle. It's an event that then NWA champ Flair knew was going to be huge from the moment he first heard about it.

"The thing about me that people don't understand is that I knew Vince [McMahon] from way back, I even knew his father. And anybody who knew Vince knew that he was going places and he was going to do huge things for this business. He just had this vision forever, and this vision just keeps getting bigger every day, as does our product."

But even though Flair saw the grand scale of what Mania could become, he didn't think anything could live up to being NWA champ.

"I didn't think of it as being any bigger than anything I was doing, I just thought it was cool. I was so focused on what I was doing and on the NWA back then that I never lost sleep over it and I never saw Hogan as the World Champion in the same arena that I was in. That's not slighting Hogan and all of his success, but I just never thought he was at the same level I was, much less any bigger. I was NWA champion. Ask any wrestler from yesteryear and he will tell you, that was the title that everybody wanted to have."

This Sunday, Flair steps onto that same stage he saw introduced so many years ago, fighting another one of the greats, Shawn Michaels. "We're pulling out all the stops," Flair tells me about the match. "There's only one person who can prevent that match from being the best match on that card and that would be me. I've got to make it happen. If Ric Flair shows up, there isn't anything that could follow it."

And who would count Flair out at this point? It seems like every time you start hearing the whispers of retirement or washed up, Flair does something so remarkable in the ring, and it brings back memories of greatness. To me, Flair's TLC match with Edge says it all. "That was awesome," Flair says of the match. "I wanted to have another one but it never came to fruition. Edge is an awesome performer. And that was my youngest daughter and my oldest daughter and my wife in the front row screaming that night." They couldn't believe the former champ put on the crimson mask and climbed to the top of the ladder at his age, still giving the fans those mark-out moments you might expect from someone trying to make a name for themselves, but not from someone whose name has become synonymous with the sport.

When I ask Flair why he wanted to do the match, however, I'm shocked by his answer.

"I didn't want to try it. They made me do it."

And as far as his career winding down, Flair says he's never considered how it should end. "The reason retirement is sitting in front of me all the time is because people keep asking me about it. I don't dwell on that. Isn't that funny? It happened and I couldn't be in a better place, but right now I'm thinking about what I could do to make my match the best match at Wrestlemania, and if I find a way to win, then I'm showing up on Raw Monday night."

And if Flair is looking to steal the show, he couldn't have a better opponent than HBK, the man who has stolen so many shows he could be charged with a crime.

"That's how good he is, so you know I've got to show up," Flair laughs. When I ask him to rank Michaels among the best of all time he puts HBK in the top three. And while he wouldn't rank his top five wrestlers of all time, he gave me two other names he says would be in the top. "Ricky Steamboat and Triple H," he says. "Triple H's work ethic alone brings him up to that level. There are just so many things that go into being in the category that don't get discussed. Longevity is one. Consistency and health is number two. And going into the arena, not TV, but the arena every night wanting to make sure that whether there were 100 or 10,000 people, that they went home saying, 'Holy s---, that was something really cool that happened tonight.'"

In the end, it's that same criteria that ranks Ric Flair right up there, in my mind, ahead of even the names he's submitted, as the best to ever put on a pair of tights and shed blood for the respect and enjoyment of his fans.

And from my own experience, he's even willing to share some of the perks of being a superstar with a couple of guys who play videogames as the Nature Boy and shout "Woo!", even if they've never taken a real bump.

This guy's more than just a nut. He's Mick Jagger with a suplex. And next time we see him, we'll be sure to have some better stories. I just hope for my friend's sake, Flair's still willing to share.

Tags: Ric Flair, WCW, NWA, WWF