Ric came and visited the troops when I was deployed in 2004, highlight of my “trip”. He was on fire, and we all loved it!!! Thanks, Ric, for helping the morale of myself and everyone who was away from home in a stressful situation.
That's great man! Thanks for your service. We have all heard Ric's probs with women, drink and money, but I truly believe he's a good dude. He LIVED his gimmick and it got him in trouble. Alot of ppl have done far worse. His 30 for 30 just cracked me up man. He was so brutally honest...it was refreshing to see
And both lead completely miserable and f$&ked personal lives. I always find it funny when some of the other wrestlers, like honky tonk man, shoot on Hogan being a “liar! And he manipulated things in his favor and only looked out for himself!” When they ALL LITERALLY DO THE SAME THING! 😂 It’s part of the reason they get into wrestling. There is a certain personality that is drawn into the wrestling business that usually consists of narcissistic traits and compulsive lying
@@blkmamba31entertainment attracts big egos lol. The last thing most people want to do is perform in front of an audience, but if you’re an entertainer that’s where you thrive. I say this as a male stripper 😅
i was front row in Dayton for the first ever match between Flair and Hogan. it was supposed to be Flair vs. Piper. We were there for four hours, two of which were tv show tapings. At midnight, they announced the main event and that Piper wasnt there..then told us Hogan would face Flair. I can promise when Hogan came out, it blew the roof off the place. I was a Flair fan and he got booed like he was supposed to and Hogan got cheered. It was amazing to be there for their first ever match. Hell yeah!
Wrestling was so stupid but as a kid we had to find things to do. I watched the WWF to learn moves and it became a mainstay because it was so fun to reenact what you saw on the show that day. It was Great time to be alive!! God Bless America 🇺🇸
@@regulardadhere8832 didn't we have like three Barber Shops that night? i could swear The Undertaker was a guest on one of them...and i remember Elizabeth did an interview with Gene on that platform they used to use.
I did, too, but we didn't get TBS until the mid- to late-80s. Before that, all we had was All-Star Wrestling on local TV, which was Central States Wrestling, partially owned by Harley Race.
My favourite RIC flair match of all time was 1992 royal rumble, when he came in number three, and won the whole thing just amazing. RIC flair will always be one of the goats.
Man I can’t believe Flair has finally gotten old. Tbh I kinda wanna cry. Watched this man entertain for many years, didn’t think he would ever get too old to jump in the ring
I grew up Hulk Hogan fan because of my mother and WWF was our local promotion. I first heard of Ric flair when he appeared in the movie Body Slam got to see him more once we got real cable back in '87. He really is an all-time great whether the villain or the good guy
I grew up in California too, and yes we did have tbs. But it wasn't the same as the stuff they got in the south. Obviously out there, the NWA was promoted and presented a lot more than for us folks in california. We just got a little bit of the scraps. I got a lot of my NWA viewing from renting VHS tapes from the video stores that's how I got to watch a lot of the early pay-per-views
He actually did not explain why Hogan was hated in the South. He explained indirectly why WCW failed, but that's not the title of the video. As far as name recognition, it depends upon what part of the South you lived in whether or not you'd be familiar with Ric Flair. He [Flair] was part of the NWA contingent, which had heavy penetration in the Carolinas and the mid-Atlantic. Hogan came out of Florida with Macho Man and such, and they wrestled in different territories (the TN-AL-FL-GA territory) but WWF came along and dissolved a lot of these territories and consolidated them, but NWA was still going as a regional promotion with a limited audience until Ted Turner established WCW, which bought out the NWA promotion and brought Flair to other audiences in the South. I do not know exactly why Hogan would have been booed but I do agree that WCW didn't have the pull to go west of the Mississippi and compete with WWF/WWE.
The difference between the old WWF and NWA was evident. The NWA was tough guys, technical wrestling and brawling muscle men. The WWF had a tugboat, a bird man, a snake, a model, a 2X4. Characters, cartoonish. But we got WWF on several channels so we saw all the television shows. We got TBS as well so we saw all the NWA shows as well. I would have loved to have seen the first Hogan Vs Flair matches in the WWF.
@@ggggloveking9419 I guess Haku, Bad News Allen, Rick Rude were softies? Randy Savage was a cream puff? Curt Hennig? The Hart Foundation, especially Bret? 🤔
2:41 I’m glad Flair said the truth there … Being a Native NYer from Manhattan … Going to the Garden to see Hogan , The Bulldogs , King Kong Bundy , George the Animal Steele and other Legends … We didn’t know who Ric Flair was … The only ones we all knew were the Road Warriors and when they finally came to WWF we were ecstatic
It wasn't "Turner's TV" that didn't have saturation in NY. It was cable TV period. Only certain areas in NY had cable. Manhattan, parts of Brooklyn and Long Island only had cable in the early-to-mid 80's. I live in Queens, and we didn't start to get cable until late 1989. To watch the NWA, we still had to rely on UHF TV stations. WTBS had some of the widest availability on cable. It was absolutely comparable to the USA Network.
I remember when I was a kid back in the early 80s. Saturday afternoon tv. NWA at noon and WWF at 1 and 4 pm. I realize they had to change their moniker to WWE after that lawsuit filed by the World Wildlife Fund but I grew up with WWF and they will always be WWF to me. Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Arn and Ollie Anderson. The Four Horsemen!! Woooo!!
For all of the 70s and most of the non-WWF 80s, it was usually a $50-75/night for most talent, and the main eventer (usually the champion) made double ($150 downside) and got a percentage of the gate money. This amount was told to them by the promoter himself. Most were sheisters and underpaid everyone. It didn't help that these weren't 15,000 seat arenas. They were mostly anywhere from 2,000-5,000 for big events, and 500-1000 for the weekly TV shows with the same audience each week. Anyone from that era that complains about payoffs, they are likely right. Even if it is one of the highest paid guys ever.
I mean it depends as the promotion is the one that can lose a lot of money. They may have had down night but a lot of guys were making a lot of money from these promotions as well. Midsouth had guys making 6 figures mid Atlantic had guys making 6 figures AWA had guys making six figures. Even in the Dusty Rhodes documentary he mentions making $500 when he first started which is why he quit football.
@Oslo Wilde Yes, it does depend in the promotion -- I was generalizing. My point is that if you weren't at the top-top, you were probably eating grilled cheese every day (or cans of tuna). Things got better as the WWF increased wages and other promotions began losing talent. In some cases, promotions began paying for travel and hotel which was not usually the case in the 70s and 80s. That's a big reason why talent complained about payoffs. It would cost the talent in cross-country gas, food for 300lb men, and cheap hotels just to net a few bucks here and there. That's why they never went to the hospital and developed long term physical issues that in some cases led to drug abuse. The top guys had more financial freedom, but it wasn't great still. If it were, there wouldn't have been so much jumping around.
Alot of the best talent even during that era was pulling around $3-5K a week by the mid-80s. I'd say around 84-86 was the high mark. I'm from GA and grew up on GA Championship Wrestling (GCW) that later became WCW after the Crockets sold. There was an amazing amount of talent there at the time...Nikita n Ivan, The Road Warriors, 4 Horsemen, the Windhams, Dusty and Magnum TA, R&R Express, Midnight Express (I've never seen anybody get heat like Jim Cornett), the Garvins, Steamboat, Sting, it just went on forever...I got to watch them tape TV once a month in Macon and the Coliseum held about 10,000. I loved this era. I was about 15 yrs old. I hated WWF. It seemed clownish. I think the biggest pop I ever heard was when Nikita turned Babyface. The guy all the kids wanted to be was Flair or Magnum TA w the belly to belly suplex. That was HARD learning he'd never wrestle again after the car accident. After Vince gobbled up all the territories and kayfabe was completely gone, I quit watching
@@EmergencyChannel Flair was definitely a business man to have the amount of money he had, he was always surrounded by pretty ladies & other business men... All business men like to say WOOOOO! 😯😂 Pimpin'
I remember in school my buddy and I were teasing this kid who didn't know pig Latin, calling him "reak-fay". Finally he got really upset and yelled "I'M NOT A RIC FLAIR!!"
In Winston -Salem NC before the show WCW would take away fans signs that said Hogan sucks or something like that. People would boo him out of the building. He was in Flair/Horsemen country!
Fact: Ric Flair put WCW on the map and stiff competition for WWF. His promo's were second to none. He had no problem sharing the spotlight and getting people over. Just ask Sting. His promo on 12/28/98 about Bishoff may be the funniest thing I ever watched.
We LOVED the Nature Boy in Albany NY in 1992 (home of the greatest Royal Rumble) - huge WOOOOs at the Knickerbocker Arena - and plenty of boos for Hogan at the close.
At the time, my pals and I thought they put off the fantasy-match too long and missed the moment. We weren't really interested in seeing it anymore in late-1991 and 1992 because both guys had their hot streaks in 1983, '84, '85, '86, '87. I'm glad the matches happened now, but at the time, that was the view of young wrestling fans in their late-teens and early 20s. It happened too late.
Pro Wrestling is such a broad and sprawling concept and I think one of the challanges the WWF faced as it grew was selling it's brand of wrestling to a market that like it's own wrestling show. I live in Calgary and I know Vince had a hard time cracking this market, even though he paid Stu Hart to pack up Stampede Wrestling. The fans liked their wild and wooley hardcore before it was cool Hart Family product.
Hulk Hogan and other WWF wrestlers were on TV everywhere (household names) JCP/NWA was more Carolinas/Atlanta and TBS/TNT. =There audiences were mostly different except for the more serious wrestling fan. Hogan/Andre the Giant were big everywhere and that how you make the really big money and merch. Toys for the kids really gets you over and Flair did not have much in the 80's.
the small arena in Philadelphia was the old Civic Center. And the NWA/Jim Crockett Promotions did draw good crowds there. It’s also where the Midnight Express beat Tully and Arn for the NWA tag belts in 1988.
I’m surprised Ric said he wasn’t over. TBS and TNT were part of Cable in the 80s in NY. Wrestling magazines and newsletters like the Apter Report were sold at Ma and Pa Convenience Stores/Pharmacies/News Stands. When he came into WWF all the kids in my school were like “whoa the Wooo guy from NWA is here now”.
HELLO MR FLAIR. YOUVE ALWAYS BEEN A LONG TIME FAVORITE. OF MINE & A TRUE LIFE ICON OF PROFESSIONAL WRESTLING. MAN. ...NO ONE EVER. IN THE BUISSNESS HAS YOUR STYLE & SAVY. IVE SAW EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR MATCHES 3 TIMES OVER & YOU WERE. THE GREATES. OF ALL TIME MAN. YOU WERE THE HE A RT OF THE BUISSNESS MR FLAIR. YOU MADE IT WHAT IT WAS TO THIS DAY & WITH OUT YOU. DOING & BEING WHAT YOUR WERE. IT WOULDA NEVER BEEN WHAT IT IS THIS DAY. . YOU WERE TRULY. AWESOME IN EVERY WAY. & NO ONE COULDA DONE IT BETTER THAN YOU. THANK YOU YOUR FOR ALL OF YOUR HARDWORK. ACHES... PAINS.... INJURIES & ALL THE GOOD TIMES MAN YU CREATED & GAVE TO US. OVERVTHE DECADES. YOU WERE TRULY GREAT MR FLAIR & YOU WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTON. LONG LIVE YOUR RETIREMENT. ENJOY. .. YOU DEFINATLY EARNED IT. & HAVE A GREAT ONE. I LOVEV YA. MAN. & THANK YOU !!!!
The first time I saw Flair was the first Pro Wrestling USA show, where he was standing with Rick Martel (previously a tag team wrestler in the WWF) and Bob Backlund (who, like most fans my age, hated). He was so subdued, possibly not wanting to show the other two up, that my friends and I were wondering why PWI stated he was the best. Growing up in NYC, I didn’t get a chance to watch Flair in the 80s, as the majority of NYC didn’t have cable. I later learned that Crockett had shows on a Spanish UHF station, but I never knew about it, because it wasn’t televised. Though, even if I did, the picture quality would have been mostly snow (unless it was on really late at night).
I'm from GA and when I was a kid, I loved the heels. When Ole, Arn, Tully, and Naitch formed the 4 Horsemen that was the pinnacle. I hated WWF. It was clownish compared to the pro wrestling in the territories
Thank you, Rick Flair, for being a role model and hero all those decades. I was a WCW fan obviously but before that, I watched Rick on VHS every chance I could. RIP to the legends we lost and long live the past kings of the roster.
I was lucky enough to grow up in the territory days and watched Georgia championship when I was coming up. Loved it. I was nwa and then wcw thru and thru
I was a real big 80s wrestling fan because that’s when I was a kid. I live on the East Coast and New Jersey area and I can remember vaguely the first time I saw the WCW on TV and by proxy Ric Flair. I kept thinking to myself who the hell are these guys?
Hey Rick I live in upstate ny..... 58 years old and I remember watching you as a kid wrestle the Von Erics Bruiser Brody and was a big fan of the Four Horsemen when you started that organization
Flair and Hogan are always honest and complementary towards each other and I really like that. Sadly the fans seem to hate HH and any rumor or bad story gets blown up by them.
I grew up on NWA(Flair) and WWF(Hogan) in the Charlotte area. Every saturday morning it was looney tunes, then NWA, then WWF, then a western, and finally my dad telling me to get off my ass and get something done. Good times.
I'm confused about this. I saw Hulk at the James L Knight Center in Miami in 1987 and it was sold out and saw Hulk at the Miami arena vs Mr Perfect in 1989 and it was sold out. I remember it very well.
Flair is right. I was an 80s kid in California and I had no clue who ric flair was. So Hogan vs Flair wasn't a big deal at the time. But in flair's defense, WWF was built on massive 500lbs or 7ft heels taking on hulk Hogan in the main event not 5 star matches. The intercontinental championship matches were the 5 star on the card but flair was way too good to be in that division so he was stuck in the semi main event. That's just how the card was built.
The NWA ruled the roost in terms of wrestling product and storylines. The WWF had entertainment value, but as the Crockett (and Von Erich) NWA the mantra was "The NWA. We wrestle." I went to wrestling at the Sam Houston Coliseum for years and that venue always sold out, but I never saw you there, Ric. I did see you in Dallas with WCCW. Did you ever work with Paul Boesch?
I was there at the Oakland Coliseum in 1991 when Ric wrestled Hogan for the very first time in the WWF in a title match! Ric won that night & I went ape shit, I was so excited when Ric got that victory over Hogan but then my jaw hit the floor when I saw that Hogan got to keep his title, boy was I pissed that night! 😆
When I was a kid in the 80's, I lived in California and watched WWE, we then moved to Charleston, WV and I still watched WWE. I moved to Charlotte, NC when I was 11 and that was the first I ever heard of Ric Flair. That's not a comment on Ric, that's just saying when he says nobody knew who he was, that's true, the average wrestling fan in an area he wasn't on t.v. had never even heard his name. I didn't even know at 11 that there were magazines you could read and had no exposure to him. Had never heard of the four horsemen, and this was back in the 80's. So there were pockets of the country that Flair hadn't been exposed to and all we had seen was the WWE product.
I grew up in the Charlotte area and started watching Mid-Atlantic in the mid-70s. Flair was always the measuring stick. When WWF showed up on cable in the early 80s, my friends and I hated it; even though we were just kids, we could tell there was no heat. It was like watching a cartoon version of wrestling - and this was even before Hogan slammed Andre. When Hogan became a literal cartoon character, there was no way he was getting over with Crockett fans. When he came to Nitro, you knew it was the beginning of the end.
During the "pre- cable tv" years, many Wrestling fans only knew of Wrestlers not in their local TV airspace by way of Pro Wrestling magazines. In retrospect, that was in many ways the beauty of the industry. Once I started to gain TV access to the NWA, I realized there was a lil less "gimmick " to their product as opposed to the WWF. Those differences meant a lot to fans back then. Whatever the case....the Hogan/ Flair build-up was a complete failure.
Exactly. East Coast fans like to say they didn't know who Ric Flair was, when all the damn Apter wrestling publications were based out of New York, there was access to them.
I saw Hogan and Flair in Richmond, VA with WWF. Flair won, the crowd went crazy. The had people around the coliseum wearing Flair wigs and you see people run after it but only to be disappointed when it was not Flair, lol. Wrestling business was at finest from 1983 to 1993
I remember when I went to my grandma's in Illinois they would have Ted Turners wrestling with a bunch of dudes I had never heard of here in Wisconsin. I missed most of the 80:s except for the cartoon though mostly because my dad was against "fake" wrestling but would support us in elementary and high school wrestling 100 percent of the way. He used to coach it when he was a school teacher.
I always find it interesting to hear what other people have to say about Bischoff and then to hear Bischoff. What I find interesting is everyone commenting on Bischoff all have a common thread to each other about their opinion of Bischoff. One or 2 you might give Eric benefit of doubt but when you hear so many, then it's hard to ignore.
Ric I used to love to hate you, always respected you. When you came to the WWF and I thought about you and Hogan, I said to myself, "you know, Ric Flair has never wanted to be a movie star or anything other than the greatest professional wrestler ever."
