Ready to live
Up from deathbed, Flair set to style, profile
Ric Flair was on his deathbed. The Rolex-wearin’, kiss-stealin’, wheelin-dealin’, limousineridin’, jet-flyin’, son of a gun was nothing but a 68-year-old man filled with failing organs and scant hope for survival. Flair never had a bodybuilder’s physique, but down almost 45 pounds, his neck shriveled to the size of his wrist. His flamboyant robes yielded to hospital gowns over 10 chilling days on life support.
Flair was devoted to a bacchanalian lifestyle during which, he says, he drank at least 10 beers and five cocktails a day to survive the two-decade grind of travelling from town to town with 10 pounds of gold around his waist and a reputation as the best wrestler in the world to uphold. Inside the ring, Flair had few peers as a tactician and a showman; at the hotel bar, he was the undisputed champ of last call.
Maybe it was the stamina he showed as the master of the 60-minute match that somehow came to the fore when he was placed in a medically induced coma at a Georgia hospital. Years of exorbitant drinking caught Flair harder than a Dusty Rhodes bionic elbow to the head - he was in the early stages of kidney failure, on the brink of congestive heart failure, needed a pacemaker and had a section of his bowel removed.
Doctors gave him a 20 per cent chance to live. Flair, in professional wrestling parlance, kicked out at the count of 2.
“People say it’s a miracle,’’ Flair said in an interview this week with The Associated Press.
There was no script for this comeback. Flair went back to his Atlanta home, he walked the red carpet at a screening for the ESPN Films 30 for 30 documentary “Nature Boy,’’ premiering Nov. 7 , and has autograph signings lined up next month. He even hinted he’d like to “style and profile’’ one more time on WWE’S “Monday Night Raw’’ on the Nov. 13 show at Phillips Arena, showing the wrestling world that diamonds are forever - as, it truly appears, is Ric Flair.
Let’s hear it from the cheap seats: Wooooo!
“Everyone has a Ric Flair story,’’ filmmaker Rory Karpf said. “Most of them are when Flair comes out naked under a robe or is dancing on a bar. For that person, it’s as crazy as their life would ever get on that night. But he was doing it every night.’’
Karpf had interviewed Flair for a film on another noted heel, former Duke star Christian Laettner. The 40-year-old Karpf grew up a diehard wrestling fan and pitched ESPN on Flair as the subject of the acclaimed documentary series. Karpf got the green light and, in 2015, started a two-year interview process with Flair and those closest to him - from his four ex-wives to the nefarious Four Horsemen.
Hulk Hogan . Triple H, Shawn Michaels. Even The Undertaker dropped his dead man gimmick for a rare real-life interview on a man many call “Naitch.’’
“He’s one of those guys that contributed to my problem,’’ Flair said with a big laugh. “He’s tough to hang with, man.’’
The documentary wrapped before Flair’s health issues surfaced, so they were not addressed. But his August hospitalization is foreshadowed as Karpf presses Flair on his partying ways, asking on camera if he can have fun without drinking.
“I don’t know. I’ve never tried it,’’ Flair says in the film. “Why would I?’’
Now, Flair said, he has no choice but to stop.
“I wouldn’t even begin to think about drinking,’’ Flair said. “If you ever hear that I’m out drinking again, say, ‘Ric, you (dummy), you deserve whatever you get.’’’
Yes, the dirtiest player in the game swears he is all about clean living.
Flair, who fought retirement for years and returned from a WWE exit to wrestle as recently as 2011, even quit the womanizing that cost him multiple marriages and led him to boast in the film that he slept with 10,000 women.
Flair has been together for several years with former wrestling personality Wendy Barlow (known as the maid “Fifi’’ from one of Flair’s old WCW talk show segments) and says he’s been faithful since the day they started a relationship. Barlow has tended to Flair as a de facto nurse in his recovery from the ordeal - he’ll soon need at least another week in the hospital and needs an ileostomy bag and his two daughters are frequently by his side. His oldest daughter, Ashley, is a former WWE women’s champion billed as Charlotte Flair and can talk smack as well as Dad can
“Nature Boy’’ takes a peek behind the curtain at the booze, babes and bouts that Flair could not surrender for the sake of a happy family life. His relationship with his oldest son, David, remains strained.
“He’s just bitter about wrestling and bitter about me not being there,’’ Flair said.
Another son, Reid, died of a drug overdose in 2013. Flair breaks down in the film as he describes the pain of losing his 25-year-old son, who had followed in dad’s footsteps as a pro wrestler. Flair and his fourth wife divorced after Reid’s death.