5) Ric Didn’t Know That Wrestling Was Staged Until Right Before His First Match
It turns out that Ric Flair didn’t know wrestling was staged until right before the first match of his career. After going through the brutal wrestling training from Verne Gagne, Flair was even more convinced that wrestling was real.
Here is what Flair had to say about his first match:
“When I had my first match, nobody ever said a word to me… They just said ‘you’re gonna wrestle ten minutes’. Nobody told me anything.”
He says that he eventually figured it out before his match when he heard guys talking to one another in the locker room before their matches.
Heck of a way to find out that wrestling is choreographed.
6) Ric Developed His Wrestling Persona After The Plane Crash
The plane crash that Ric Flair was in has been highly publicized. One thing that was interesting was that Flair developed his legendary character while rehabbing from that crash.
Flair revealed that while he was recovering from the crash, he realized that he wanted to be more like Buddy Rogers. He dyed his hair blonde and decided that he wanted to become a bad guy.
Flair slimmed down in weight considerably during this time and developed his legendary persona that became world-renowned.
In a strange way that crash was a blessing for him in terms of his wrestling success.
7) Ric Drank A Ridiculous Amount Of Booze Per Day
One of the biggest revelations of the documentary was how much alcohol Flair drank a day. There are millions of stories about how much Flair liked to party and have fun but we never really knew how bad it was.
Flair admitted that since he started wrestling in the 1970’s he drank 10 beers and 5 mixed drinks a day. This continued for decades in a cycle. He would drive to the hotel and have beers in the car. He would have the mixed drinks at night at the hotel bar.
When Flair told a sports psychologist how much he drank, the psychologist said that it was impossible.
It is clear that Ric Flair was a functioning alcoholic throughout most of his life.
8) Ric Couldn’t Be Alone
One of the reasons for all of Flair’s issues with drinking seem to stem from the idea that he could never be alone. Flair would say that he would be bored out of his mind when he wasn’t on the road wrestling.
When he was on the road, he had to make it a party. Jim Ross told a pretty telling story on the documentary about when him and Flair rolled into a Holiday Inn bar. It was only Jim, Ric and about a dozen people in the bar. Jim thought it would be a quiet night in but Ric made it into a party.
Flair ordered 137 Kamikaze shots and started doing them with the dozen patrons of the bar. He turned the place into a raging party. Ross asked: why can’t they just have a couple of beers and relax. That just wasn’t the way Ric operated.
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