The Nature Boy: An Appreciation

There are going to be lots and lots of bloggers and writers who feel the need to tell everyone they can about Ric Flair and what the Nature Boy has meant to them. So, yeah. I feel like I can write an appreciation for Ric Flair too.

Wrestling began for me during the WWF and MTV era. I first got a kick out of Hulkamania (there, I said it) but that quickly faded and I wanted more than anything for Roddy Piper to beat Hulk Hogan badly and put the end to ludicrous Rock-n-Wrestling Connection. (Like we were supposed to believe in that!)

But that faded quickly too. It all changed in late 1984 when I saw Ric Flair on the Superstation.

Growing up, there were two distinct camps of wrestling fans. You were either a Flair guy or a Hogan guy. It was like Yankees-Red Sox and Islanders-Rangers, 100%. I, obviously, was a Flair fan and a big mark for the Horsemen. Still am. The difference between Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair has never been about the WWF vs. the NWA or any of that crap. It's always been about believability--or, as Jim Ross says, the sizzle versus the steak. Hulk Hogan was all sizzle. The WWF had the market cornered on sizzle. Ric Flair had a fair amount of sizzle too, but he also had the ability to make you care and make you think what you were seeing was real. He gave the wrestling business an air of legitimacy because he projected an image that he really mattered. Nobody could dream of "24 inch pythons" and being big and thick like Hogan was...but you still could dream of being the coolest guy in the neighborhood who ran around with the tough dudes like Arn Anderson and kissed all the women and made them cry. It was just more realistic. You could almost see yourself custom made from head to toe in that suit from "Michaels of Kansas City". Hell, I wore a suit to school every day and hated it. This guy loved it. Changed my opinion about the dress code immediately. Probably walked a little taller that Monday when I went back to school, too. My tie was much tighter around my neck and my shoes were polished, for sure. That much I remember.

If Hulk Hogan allowed the fan to make the leap from comic books to wrestling, then Ric Flair facilitated the jump from real sports to wrestling. Again, he looked the part of what a champion should look like. A "real" champion wouldn't hesitate to tell you how good he was and a real champion simply wouldn't walk around town in a ripped up red t-shirt with his name on it and a stupid brown leather weight belt. He'd style and profile from city to city as a jet-flying, limousine-riding, kiss-stealing son of a gun.

Hulk Hogan just dusted off monster opponents left and right and the whole match was just getting in the way of the presentation and the pose-down. You knew that was how everything was going to end. With Ric Flair, the gimmick was often turned on it's side. You never really knew--even if you thought you knew--whether he was going to escape with that belt or not. He made a star out of the opponent and believers of the audience and raised the whole thing to a higher plane of performance. While Hogan sold t-shirts, Ric Flair sold legitimacy. We cared because he made us care about the gold around his waist. It was all out there on TV or in the ring or in the bar after the matches. Ric Flair lived his gimmick because he was his gimmick...and in the semi-serious performance art that is professional wrestling, the legitimacy holds sway over the audience who wants to suspend their disbelief.

Everyone has their stories about meeting people they admire and I am no different. I've never been one to get starstruck or too interested in saying I have seen or met famous people, but there's always an exception.

In 1989, Flair had wrestled Terry Funk all over the New Haven Coliseum and afterward, we went to a bar across the street where a lot of the wrestlers went after the matches. The whole scene was really strange with the wrestlers on one side and the majority of the fans on the other side acting like too-shy teenagers at their first school dance. I was sitting chatting with Jim Cornette and Rick Steiner (Steiner mostly grunted) when The Nature Boy walked into the bar. It sounds almost like a cliché to say that the bar went quiet, but it did, until Terry Funk yelled out to Flair that he didn't want to be in the same bar with "no banana-nose puke who made me bleed in this God-forsaken shit-hole". Flair laughed it off and stopped in front of us. He leaned over and said something to Cornette about "staying off the hard stuff" (Cornette was drinking Sprite) and I introduced myself by saying it was a pleasure to meet the greatest wrestler of all-time. Flair smiled and said that the pleasure was all his. He asked me how I enjoyed the show and we ended up making small talk about The Great Muta while he waited for his drink. He got his drink, shook my hand again, and excused himself because he had business to talk over with Gary Hart. Smooth as hell and total class. Guy even called me "Sir". I was barely out of my teens!

I guess the highest compliment you can give someone in the public eye is that when you've met them, the person you looked up to wasn't a total jerk and made the whole thing worthwhile. I don't think any fan who has interacted with Ric Flair has felt disappointed. He is, as Gordon Solie used to say, "the personification of class".

So, it feels kind of strange writing an appreciation for a pro wrestler; but Ric Flair wasn't (isn't) just a pro wrestler. He has, through all of the ups and downs of his career, been a constant in the lives of many of us who feel that we grew up with Ric Flair as a hero; someone to emulate. His matches with Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk and Dusty Rhodes still hold up today as well as any emotional movies or stories or plays that have endured through time. Yes, I mean Shakespeare and I mean Hitchcock and I mean whomever you want to throw in there. They are timeless classics that were able to control and manipulate the emotions of the people who watched them even though we all were in on the big secret. Doing it without the modern nod-and-a-wink obliterization of kayfabe made it all the more better. It's what's missing today in the WWE, people.

The career indignities of the nineties humanized The Nature Boy for us, somewhat painfully. And a lot of his WWE tenure was akin to giving a teenager the keys to a classic Oldsmobile, only to restrict the kid to only driving to the grocery store and other crappy trips around town. But it doesn't matter. No matter how many times they tried, it was true. Management couldn't kill Ric Flair. Again, that was because we cared.

With Ric Flair's expected retirement this Sunday after his match with Shawn Michaels, the last link to the wrestling I enjoyed growing up will be gone. And with it, my interest in the mat game itself. To that end, I thank Ric Flair for the many, many years of vicarious enjoyment and fun. Many people are going to say you hung on too long but you know what? You deserve to go out on your own terms when you're ready. You've earned it. Thank you, sir.