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The Magnificent Seven: Ric Flair’s Top 7 Non-Wrestling Moments

July 20, 2017 | Posted by Mike Chin
Ric Flair Image Credit: WWE

The Magnificent Seven: Ric Flair’s Top 7 Non-Wrestling Moments

Ric Flair is widely celebrated as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. Most of the accolades come for his in ring work—for the classics he put on with Ricky Steamboat and Terry Funk, or the way he ran the WWF gauntlet in the 1992 Royal Rumble, or the longevity he demonstrated in continuing his career as he approached four decades as a wrestler.

But what of his work outside the ring? As great as Flair was in the ring, there’s a very real argument to be made that he was at least as good on the mic, and that it’s the synergy of his talking and his wrestling that really made him an all-time great. So, this column looks back at Flair’s best moments out of the ring. The biggest factors in consideration were entertainment value and memorability in a vacuum, with some consideration to storyline development and effect on surrounding acts. As always, my personal opinion weighs heavily on the list and its order.

#7. “With A Tear In My Eye…”

In January 1992, Ric Flair picked up his biggest WWF/E in-ring win when he outlasted the field and picked up his first WWF Championship by winning the Royal Rumble from the number three spot. He’s widely praised for his stamina and ring work, and Bobby Heenan tends to get a lot of credit, too for his virtuosic performance on color commentary, selling Flair’s peril and triumph brilliantly at different intervals.

Lost in the shuffle is Flair’s promo backstage after the win, in which he proclaims, “with a tear in my eye, this is the greatest moment of my life.” The promo isn’t Flair’s longest, or objectively his best, but the emotion feels very real as Flair transcended the NWA tradition in which he’d been known to be great, to all of the WWF fans who may have been more oblivious to his legacy. While you can argue that he peaked at this moment, it was nonetheless the celebration that punctuated Flair becoming not just a WWF Superstar like Dusty Rhodes had done, but beyond any doubt an all time great performer and kayfabe star by winning that promotion’s world title.

#6. Mauling Ricky Steamboat

Years before Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat staged their classic trilogy of matches of the NWA World Championship (let alone the epic 1994 sequel) the two feuded as younger men they feuded over the TV Championships in a heated feud for supremacy. The rivalry featured an iconic moment when Flair got down and dirty, going so far as to grind Steamboat’s pretty face against the television studio floor to scar it. It was a violent, ugly, and realistic attack that didn’t involve a lot of theatrics, just one man authentically tearing at another in a statement of his physical superiority. The moment added some vital heat to their budding feud, lending Steamboat some of the sympathy he built so well, and selling Flair as a real scoundrel. Better yet, in the follow up, Steamboat tore up Flair’s expensive suit in a retaliatory program segment—befitting each man’s identity as a performer and continuing to push the rivalry.

#5. Hall of Fame Induction (Solo)

While I tend to feel Hall of Fame induction speeches are a little bit of a copout when we talk about best moments, Flair’s one of those tip-top stars even among legends, not to mention his gift for gab, not to mention his longevity, not to mention the partying lifestyle that he espoused for decades, all of which left him uniquely equipped to give a uniquely great Hall of Fame speech.

This speech was one of the Hall of Fame’s greatest, singing the praises of iconic opponents, saluting legendary personalities like Gordon Solie, talking about his current friends in the locker room, and apologizing to his family for spending so much time on the road, en route to doing what any great wrestler will—turning to Shawn Michaels to sell the fans on his match for the following night.

#4. Slick Ric

A part of Ric Flair’s success as a promo man is the use of unique catchphrases. Sure, he’s got his trademark “WOOO!” but he’s also got a litany of words to sell himself as wealthy, high class, sexy, and a great athlete. Few Flair promos more efficiently make use of (besides innovating some) of the Nature Boy’s signature sayings than this gem from the mid-1980s that got female fans chanting along the “Slick Ric” moniker.

While Flair could do intensity and insanity well, this was Flair having fun and selling class like only he could, and so it goes down as one of his very best ventures on the mic.


The 4 Horsemen reunite (WCW) by swantom-bomb

#3. “The Horsemen are having a party tonight in Greenville!”

A confession: I was both too young and too committed to WWF programming as a kid to really get The Horsemen, until I started catching up on what the group really meant in retrospect. I didn’t start following WCW until 1993, so my exposure to the group, in real time, had Paul Roma as a member, followed by the better but still not exactly purist versions that featured Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko.

Nonetheless, even without a full frame of reference, when the Horsemen reunited on a Fall 1998 episode of Nitro—marking not only the band getting back together, but Ric Flair’s return after an extended absence due to backstage strife—the emotion was palpable, and I was on board with this traditionalist group making its grand come back to fight the nWo. Flair’s promo work in this black-tie promo segment was especially captivating as he bridged the space between gratitude and honoring tradition, to spewing pure vitriole toward Eric Bischoff and adding heat to the more immediate program.

While the fact that reformed Horsemen wouldn’t really accomplish much lessens the historical impact of this segment a bit, one of those few times a Nitro promo segment really knocked it out of the park in the heat of the Monday Night War.

#2. “To Be The Man…”

The statement that, “To be the man, you have to beat the man,” is among Flair’s most iconic catchphrases, and he used it a lot over the years. It says a lot—from the immediate implication that Flair is, himself, the man and well aware of it, to the sense of gravitas that any match in which he’s seriously challenged might be a torch-passing moment because someone else might become the man by beating him.

Accordingly, the first documented use I could find of the catchphrase came at WrestleWar 1989, in Flair’s third match in his classic series with Ricky Steamboat. This encounter would blowoff that iteration of their brilliant rivalry that was centered on outstanding ring work. The question: would Steamboat join Flair as not only his peer in phenomenal ring work, but in kayfabe greatness by picking up the final victory? Or would Steamboat remain a top guy, but not the man.

Flair won that match would go on to use versions of phrase in all manners of rivalry, culminating in his last WWE pre-match promo, in which he was asked about his game plan against Shawn Michaels, and said simply, “My plan is to be the man.”

#1. The Retirement Segment on Raw

This is a controversial pick to be sure, given it’s more of an epilogue to than a chapter in Flair’s glorious career, but still, when I think of non-wrestling segments that genuinely affected me and were unique to Flair, it’s hard to beat this one. Yes, the segment welcomed a variety of legends on screen, offered a peak behind the curtain at Flair’s real life relationships with the stars of yesteryear and that day (in 2008), and pulled on the heartstrings by playing and replaying the chorus to that that otherwise largely Fuel song, “Leave the Memories Alone.” All of those pieces might well earn this segment a spot on the countdown.

This bit of television shoots straight to number one for me, though, on account of all that it said about Ric Flair and his legacy. For who else has WWE done a tribute like this for? The closest thing I can think of are the posthumous tributes for which the current roster clears out of the locker room for the ten ring-bell salute, but this was an awe-inspiring outpouring for a living legend. Moreover, the breadth of stars represented in it spoke to Flair’s longevity and influence; it lent a sense of an epic journey and celebration of a character’s history, like four hobbits getting knelt down to at the end of Return of the King or like JD walking down a row of old friends and lovers on the Scrubs finale (too nerdy? Let me reel it back…).

This is the kind of segment that makes even the most hardened, unsentimental wresting fan tear up, or at least get a shiver down his or her spine for the overwhelming expression of love and celebration of a legacy. The sight of Flair with tears streaming down his face reinforced the message–that for as long, hard, and winding the journey may have been, it was worth it for The Nature Boy and his fans.

Which segments or moments would you add to the list? Let us know what you think in the comments.

Read more from Mike Chin at his website and follow him on Twitter @miketchin.