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

Ric Flair declares his Super Bowl pick in front of 20,000 screaming fans

Posted: Feb 4th 2018 By: Www.charlotteobserver.com

Wrestling icon Ric Flair announced his pick for the Sunday’s Super Bowl in typical Ric Flair fashion – standing in a stadium of 20,000 screaming fans.

“To be the team, you got to beat the team,” Flair screamed, one finger stabbing the air to punctuate his words. “Right now I’ll say it: The Eagles are the team. And the Patriots? Not going to happen, baby. Not going to happen.”

Flair made his Philadelphia Eagles pick known Friday morning at the 26th annual Wing Bowl, which is held in the Eagles hometown. The Wing Bowl is an annual wing eating contest, and this year it just happened to come days before the hometown team faced off against the New England Patriots in Minneapolis.

This marks the second year Flair has been a special guest at the event, and he joked Friday that the fans there are what put him in the hospital last year for a month last year. It was a near-death experience for the retired wrestler that helped create a surge in his popularity.

That Flair would pick the Eagles over New England is a surprise, considering his long standing friendship with Patriots quarterback Tom Brady. In 2016, Flair tweeted that Brady was both a friend and the “one of the greatest players in the history of football.”

Earlier this week, Sports Illustrated published and article that suggested Brady is “the NFL’s version of Ric Flair.”

“The parallels between Flair and Brady, who is preparing for the Super Bowl this Sunday, are striking,” wrote Sports Illustrated. “Flair was known as a 60-minute man throughout his career (and) Brady still saves his best moments for the end of the fourth quarter, right before the 60-minute mark. Brady is still producing at a high level, and like Ric, as long as he’s producing, he’ll keep playing.”