Ric Flair's Final Match Was a Total Spectacle...and I Loved It

The Nature Boy Says Goodbye in Nashville

I was 10 years old the first time I understood what hate was.

Ric Flair, the champion of the world, was in real trouble at the Omni. He was down bad inside a steel cage, three Russians attempting to win the Cold War on a beautiful Atlanta night by stomping the American star into the mat, barely contained glee written on faces that didn’t usually seem to know what a smile was.

That’s when the Dream emerged to a roar I can still hear when I close my eyes, Dusty Rhodes coming to the rescue of his rival, clearing the ring with elbows that boomed like howitzers, three Ruskies suddenly discovering discretion was the better part of valor.

Sure Rhodes and Flair hated each other with the burning heat of a thousand suns. But it was 1985, they had likely seen Red Dawn, and by God, they were both Americans. You settle the nation’s business before dealing with your own petty grievances. Right or wrong, that’s how we saw it in the months before Rocky Balboa and Ivan Drago showed us all a better way.

In wrestling, however, you never leave your guard down. I was in the fifth grade and deserved a pass. Children are trusting and foolish until some wretched soul teaches them not to be.

But Dusty? Dusty knew better. He should have expected the vile Anderson brothers to sneak into the cage and demolish him from behind. He should have known Ric Flair was not a man who could be trusted.

Flair and the Andersons, not yet known as the Four Horsemen, padlocked the cage so there was no way out, no path for the righteous to save the Dream from being destroyed. Fans pushed forward to surround the cage while the three villains did their worst, Flair himself leaping off the top rope to wreck Dusty’s ankle as the Andersons held him in place.

Only the skillful intervention of Dr. Joseph Estwanik was able to save Dusty’s career. But my innocence? That was gone forever thanks to the dirtiest player in the game.

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In the years to come, Ric Flair would make it hard to hate him. Even when he was making life miserable for my favorites, rubbing poor Ricky Morton’s face in the concrete or running scared from the Road Warriors, he did it with a panache and style it was difficult not to enjoy. I even turned on what we used to call “Yankee wrestling” to see what the Nature Boy was up to when he went over to the other team. Such was the power of his gravitational pull.

For 40 years, Flair has been part of my life, the single greatest performer in a business full of physical and improvisational brilliance. I’ve watched him speak for hours as he shared the trivial details of a career spent careening around the ring, spitting dip into a cup as he told tales of a life spent desperately trying to hold it steady in the fastest of fast lanes.

“The Nature Boy wasn't fake. The Nature Boy was me,” Flair told me in an interview a few years ago. “If I said it in a promo, I really did it. I lived my gimmick every day of the week and all night.”

I’ve heard him talk about his profligate spending and read the details of his subsequent financial failures. I’ve seen him enter into holy matrimony, and heard much and more about his sexual peccadilloes. He’s boasted of his prowess so often, his very public loss of confidence was a blow felt even by his fans. I’ve seen him woo, chop and strut on multiple continents around the world. I’ve seen him retire and come back multiple times.

And, last night on pay-per-view, I saw his final act.

Ric Flair’s Last Match was a love letter from his son-in-law (podcast genius Conrad Thompson), both to Flair himself and to a period of time lost forever to history. Announcers Tony Schiavone and David Crockett were there, reliving past glories on a painstakingly recreated set resembling the studio where they once filmed syndicated television for Jim Crockett Promotions. The other Horsemen styled and profiled all weekend too, along with a who’s who of wrestling stars from years gone by.

The undercard, stocked with some of the best talent from around the world, included show-stealing performances from luchadores Rey Fenix, Black Taurus, Laredo Kid and Bandido and rugged wrestling courtesy of the Briscoes and Von Erichs.

But, with respect, the Undertaker, Bret Hart and Kid Rock didn’t show up to see the next generation shine. They, along with a crowd of thousands, were there to see Flair walk that aisle one more time.

There was many questions going in about how much Flair, a 73-year-old man with a pacemaker and a litany of ailments big and small, would have left.

The answer was “not much” if you wanted to be polite.

At times it felt like Flair could barely move at all, exhausting himself just walking across the ring, his son-in-law Andrade carrying the load as we all knew he must. Across the way, Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal did everything in their considerable power, both to hide Flair’s fragility and piece together fragments of a story into a cohesive whole.

Jarrett, in particular, was a force of nature, tossing water at fans, beefing with Flair’s family ringside and generally looking like a man who had bested Father Time in a two-out-of-three falls match that allowed him to erase 20 of his 55 years on the planet.

There was blood. Flair faked a heart attack in front of his family. The Undertaker sat looking grim at ringside and fans tried desperately to believe in their hearts that this wasn’t all a little sad. Jarrett and Flair both did versions of his famous strut, while Ric’s daughter Megan and Jarrett’s wife Karen scrapped harder than either competitor did in the ring that night.

It was a lot to take in. I loved it.

At one point Flair collapsed in the corner and I wondered if he was selling his injuries or literally dying before our eyes.

I’m still not sure.

Mercifully, the match part of the night was complete with no catastrophes and the victorious Nature Boy was able to catch his breath for an interview with Schiavone. Tears were flowing freely, thousands saying goodbye to something and someone who had been a big part of their lives.

And then he was gone, off to Broadway and another night being Ric Flair. It was the end of an era we won’t soon forget, the spectacle and pageantry fitting for the final notes of wrestling’s most beautiful song.