Ric Flair is one of the most popular stars to come out of professional wrestling, transcending the thin line between wrestling and pop culture. He has been successful in every wrestling promotion he has been in and he also has a unique feat of wrestling in North Korea in front of the biggest crowd for a wrestling event.
With such a long career, there have been many controversies surrounding him and several incidents where he was close to dying. Let’s take a look at the interview where Ric Flair revealed insights into such happenings in his career.
Flair reveals near-death experience
It’s almost impossible to imagine professional wrestling without Ric Flair because the impact he has had on the industry as a whole has been unreal. He has been an inspiration for multiple generations of wrestlers and is also a 16-time World Champion, which is a record tied but not broken to date. But there might have been an alternative universe where we might not have had Ric Flair, as he revealed recently that he was involved in a near-fatal plane crash.
On The Breakfast Club Power podcast, he revealed that during the crash, there were 6 people onboard, including the pilot, who sadly passed away. Two other people were paralyzed and he was fortunate that he and two other passengers were still alive.
He was quoted as saying, “No (plane didn’t explode), we ran out of gas so there was no explosion but normally a small twin-engine sets in a 310, normally when you hit an Orchard of trees or whatever they would call it. Little cartwheel plane, we were going so fast, we fell from 6,000 ft. We just tore down the whole damn Orchard and landed in a railroad embankment, that train track, just half a mile from the runway… [We were] 6. The pilot died, 2 were paralyzed and three of us made it.”
Ric Flair excludes the Rock from his wrestling Mount Rushmore
In the same interview, Ric Flair was asked to name his wrestling Mount Rushmore, which is never an easy task. There have been so many superstars to come out of WWE and different eras should have their own Mount Rushmore. But with an impossible task to only pick 4 greatest wrestlers of all time, he left The Rock out of the list.
He was quoted in an interview, “Austin, Hogan, ‘Taker and Shawn Michaels, you could put The Rock on there too. It’s interchangeable. Probably the best worker of all time is Shawn Michaels. The biggest personality of all time would be The Rock. The biggest draw of all time would be Steve and you can’t ever leave Hulk off because he drew a ton of money. It was a different time frame but it was sold out every night.”
Now that Ric Flair has finally retired after wrestling in his last match in 2022, will his achievement of record title reigns will ever be broken? Feel free to discuss in the comments.
