by Ric Flair
It reminded me of another time with Vince. Oddly enough, it also involved Randy. It was after our match at WrestleMania VIII. During that time, there was a strict rule in WWE about not having blood as part of our matches.
Without getting the okay from the boss, Randy and I decided to do something different. We wanted to add something extra to the match, since it was for the WWE Championship and Randy would be winning it there in Indianapolis. We had our match, and I bled from my head. I didn’t expect a parade in my honor when I got backstage, but I thought we had a very good match. When I saw Vince, he was furious. He said, “Just when you’re close to greatness, you do something stupid.” I hoped what I was considering would not fall into that category.
Everything Vince ever told me about myself was true. Whether I wanted to hear it at the time or not, Vince was always right when it came to me. Especially when I was a little “too much Nature Boy.”
I looked back on something Mickey Rourke told me when we had drinks one night. He told me that Darren Aronofsky, the director of The Wrestler, fought hard with the movie studio to make sure that he got the part of Randy “the Ram.” Though the details are not the same, it reminded me of many different times when people went to bat for me: Jimmy Crockett pushing with everything he had to make me the NWA Champion following Starrcade ’83; Vince giving me the ball to run with coming back to WWE in 2001; Paul putting it on the line for me for my match with Undertaker at WrestleMania X8; and later, to be the senior member of Evolution.
In the same breath, I thought about Shawn. I looked down at the Rolex that was on my wrist. He had a matching one. WrestleMania XXIV weekend was the biggest thing I’d ever done in my life in wrestling, which is my life. It’s bigger than any Starrcade, bigger than when I wrestled Paul in Greenville, bigger than any of the times I locked up with Hogan. It was the biggest match of my career.
Shawn Michaels will go down in the history of this wonderful industry as the greatest performer of all time. To have that match with him at WrestleMania, at that level, was unquestionably the largest honor ever bestowed on me. I did not want to disrespect Shawn and the timeless story he created for my final match at WrestleMania XXIV. I did not want to diminish the meaning of our work by stepping in the ring again. I kept calling Shawn to tell him what I was feeling.
Harley, Blackjack, and Dusty reached a point in their lives where they found this peace within themselves to leave wrestling in the ring behind and move on to something else. Shawn’s career was not over, but I knew he had also found that peace. While Shawn quietly laid the foundation for plans to exit the business in the next couple of years, I found myself doing everything in my power to find a way to stay in it.
Before I gave Shawn what I promised would be my final call, I needed to call Reid to find out the date of his next doctor’s appointment. Then I needed to call Ashley to find out how things were going in Chapel Hill.
6
AN OFFER I COULDN’T REFUSE
Everyone was so respectful, but I had to go home.
May 2010
Medical bills from Reid’s trips to the emergency room, along with his hospital stays and physician visits, mounted. At one point, the doctors were concerned that his continued drug use could result in the loss of his leg. There was a point when he relapsed and went through treatment. He completed the program and remained committed to beating this disease. I really felt for him. The intense scrutiny from the Charlotte media, while he tried to deal with a private matter, made things worse for Reid. I’ll never forgive them for going out of their way to publicize my son’s struggles and what he was dealing with.
As I educated myself about addiction, I learned that heroin is considered by many experts to be the most, or one of the most, addictive drugs anyone can use. I read about triggers: these are stresses, people, locations, memories … anything that can cause someone who’s battling addiction to feel the need to start using again.
We met with experts. Something I didn’t understand was the approach known as “tough love.” This would be to kick my son out of the house or turn my back on him unless he stopped using drugs. I didn’t understand how anyone could do that to his or her child. I felt it was easy for someone to say that Reid’s mother, Beth, and I should’ve done that. You don’t know where your child is, who he is with, or what he is doing. And you’re telling him that you’re shutting him out. If something happened, if he needed help, would he contact us? No matter how upset or frustrated I got, I couldn’t tell my son that he was out of my life.
My belief was that if he was out with me at a restaurant having dinner or at home watching a game on TV, at least he was with me. I could see what he was doing. There were times when he lived with me until he broke one of the house rules. Then he would go to stay with his mom for a while; something would happen there, and then he’d be back with me and then back with her. We desperately tried to find something that worked, especially since he wanted to get better.
Reid came out of the treatment facility with a great attitude. In fact, he was so well liked that he became friends with the staff.
During this time, Reid was healthy and making progress in his battle with addiction. He continued to train in Charlotte for a career in wrestling with former WCW star Lodi. Reid was determined to make more appearances at independent wrestling events and gain more experience working in front of an audience. He wanted to earn another tryout with WWE.
Ashley remained dedicated to completing her studies at NC State and was graduating in May. She was also getting married. I was so proud of her for earning her college degree. I was not overjoyed about her getting married to Riki. The more time I spent with him, the less appealing he became; negative aspects of his personality and behavior became more and more obvious. But what can you do when your daughter appears happy with the person she’s with, even if you’re not?
While Reid was trying to pull his life together and Ashley was planning her wedding, things in my world were starting to change too.
At the end of 2009, I spoke with Shawn one last time about an opportunity that the Hulk mentioned. I wanted Shawn to know that I didn’t want to do anything to disrespect him. As always, Shawn put my mind at ease.1
Hulk had signed with a company called TNA Wrestling. Longtime promoter Jerry Jarrett and his son Jeff founded the company in 2002. TNA started by airing their program through weekly pay-per-view broadcasts. They were associated with the NWA. Over the years, TNA management changed. By this time, Dixie Carter was well established as the president of TNA. The company was far removed from being affiliated with the National Wrestling Alliance, and TNA had its own weekly cable TV program.
Hulk was going to be the on-air authority figure for their weekly television program on Spike TV. Hulk felt he needed an opponent fans knew he had a history with, and that opponent had to be viewed as an archrival. I called Hulk back, told him the news, and said, “I’m coming.”
Over the years, the animosity between Hulk and me was developed for the cameras. For so long, we were the faces of two companies that competed against one another. During the ’80s, the monthly wrestling magazines were an important way for fans to keep up with what was going on in our business.
Hulk and I were featured on many of the covers, appearing to clash in a match between the NWA World Heavyweight Champion and the WWE Champion—the dream match, between me, the ruthless greedmonger and definition of opulence, and Hulk, the all-American hero. Because of that, people thought we really were rivals and didn’t like one another.
What many people both in and outside the business didn’t know was that Hulk and I were always friends.
The first time I met Hulk was in the early ’80s. I was in Atlanta, Georgia, at the WTBS TV studio. I was the World Champion. He was then known as Sterling Golden. Hulk worked in different territories through the southeast and started to come into his own when he worked for Verne in the AWA.
Promoter Jim Barnett said to me, “This guy who’s coming here t
oday, Sterling Golden, is going to be the biggest star in the business someday.”
I said, “Huh? What about me?”
When I went to WWE in ’91, I learned that WWE legend turned road agent Chief Jay Strongbow’s nickname for Hulk was “the Golden Goose.” And that was for good reason.
In the ’80s, Hulk and Vince McMahon worked together to bring WWE to pop culture status and mainstream prominence. As a professional, I’ll always be proud of the schedule I kept when I performed. The World Champion meant you performed all over the world. There were times when I was gone twelve weeks at a time, flying and driving all over the place. Maintaining the prestige of the NWA and the championship were the focal points of my interviews. The guys who worked for WWE in those days were often on the road for seventy consecutive days. Everyone in the business ran hard.
There were a few times, before I came to WWE, that Hulk and I crossed paths while we worked for different companies. We met up in St. Louis when he worked for Verne, and we saw each other in Philadelphia when WWE was in the Spectrum and the NWA was in the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Both venues were sold out.
We were on two different teams: I was the face of the NWA, presented to audiences as legitimate sport; Hulk was the face of WWE, sports entertainment, and the greatest spectacle on earth. Our in-ring styles, characters, and philosophies were completely different. Hulk and WWE were in the big arenas with a consistently larger fan base thanks to WWE’s cable TV, syndication, home video line, and incredible marketing and promotion. I went through the NWA territories and worked a variety of small, medium, and large venues all over the world.
The companies we worked for were managed in completely different ways: The NWA had a board of directors who voted on who would be the champion, where that champion would work, and how long he would be champion. For WWE, everything began and ended with Vince McMahon. Big difference.
When Crockett sold to Ted Turner and WCW was created, there were booking committees: a group of people who decided on creative direction. I was part of a committee at different times, but I was not in charge. Other executives handled business matters and ultimately reported to Turner Broadcasting. Again, a completely different system from a corporate entity being run by one person.
At Turner, most of the executives didn’t want wrestling as part of their programming. They didn’t know anything about it or make any attempt to educate themselves about our business. Many of them tried to transfer the business experience they had in other areas to professional wrestling. Talk about trying to put a square peg in a round hole! The NWA and WCW never knew how to market their product. I remember being in WCW, and CNN, owned by Turner, would do a story on wrestling and only feature WWE—we were part of the same organization as CNN. Are you kidding me?
At WWE, the people who work there live, breathe, eat, and sleep the sports-entertainment business.
I remember when Hulk and I learned that we had something in common: an incredible love of wrestling since childhood. I idolized the stars of the AWA in Minnesota. Hulk loved the wrestling he saw in Florida. We shared an idol in Dusty Rhodes.
After I hung up the phone with Hulk and told him I was coming to TNA, it reminded me of when I made the deal with Vince in 1991 to come to WWE. My phone rang the next day. When I picked it up, I heard, “So you’re finally comin’?” It was Hulk.
A part of me will always be flattered that fans will wonder what the main event between us would’ve been like at WrestleMania VIII for the WWE Championship. I think we could’ve had a great match, but it’s not something I dwell on. There are a few reasons for that: Vince never promised me that I’d work with Hulk; he never guaranteed that I’d win the WWE Championship; he never established who else on the roster I’d work with.
The only thing Vince promised me was that he’d make me more money, and he did. The year and a half that I worked for WWE, from July of ’91 to January of ’93, I made $130,000 more than if I had stayed in WCW. I was having so much fun working for WWE that when the WrestleMania match with Hulk didn’t happen, my focus turned to what Vince had lined up for me. Whether it was on TV, on pay-per-views, or at live events, I worked with all the top names in the company: Roddy Piper, Randy Savage, Hulk, Bret Hart, Razor Ramon, Undertaker, and Curt (Mr. Perfect). So to me, I was making more money than I had with WCW, working with the top guys, and having the time of my life. I thought it was great.
When Hulk came to WCW, the dream match that fans wanted to see on a pay-per-view level happened. Bash at the Beach did excellent business for WCW, and only a few people behind the scenes knew that I was the person who made the connection between Hulk and Eric Bischoff, who was in charge of WCW at the time. Eric asked if I knew him and if I could set up a meeting. I drove with Eric to Orlando while Hulk was there shooting the show Thunder in Paradise. The two spoke, and the rest was history. I arranged a similar meeting for Eric a couple of months later with Randy Savage. We were building a team. It was a lot of fun. I didn’t know it would be temporary.
Every time Hulk and I did something together in WCW, it sold out or was very close to a sellout. We had twenty-minute matches, not the two- or three-minute main events that angered WCW fans. What frustrated me was despite all that, our matchup was only used when WCW needed an opponent for Hulk. Then they went in another creative direction.
For example, in 1999, Hulk said that he thought he wanted to take off the colors of the nWo and go back to the red and yellow of Hulkamania. I told Eric, “I can do it. I can turn him back.” We worked together in the main event at weekend shows in the United Center in Chicago with a gate of close to $600,000; in Milwaukee it was $200,000, and the next weekend on a Sunday afternoon in Detroit, we did $400,000. I’d arrive at the building for Nitro on Monday, and Hulk was doing something else. I had no idea why, and no one spoke to me about it. It didn’t make any sense.
What bothered me was that I felt Eric ignored the success Hulk and I had working together. At that time, Eric’s style of managing talent was what I like to describe as “divide and conquer.” Hulk and Randy would be in one corner, Arn and I would be in another; Scott Hall and Kevin Nash would be in one, and Sting and Luger would be in the other.
Working with Hulk was always so easy and so much fun. Were there times Hulk and I argued about things professionally? Absolutely. Were there times we agreed to disagree? Of course. That happens when you work with people. I was long past any frustrations with WCW.
Eric was going to TNA with Hulk. Eric and I had a rough start when he came to work for WWE in 2002, but by the time the opportunity with TNA came along, that was all water under the bridge.
Of course I didn’t go to TNA to compete with WWE. You measure a company in this industry by TV ratings, pay-per-view buy rates, ad sales, live attendance, merchandise sales, consumer products sales, sponsorships, and licensing, among other criteria. WWE has not had direct competition in the sports-entertainment genre since 1999. When they did, it was with WCW, and that was primarily in television ratings. And if you looked at what WCW was doing then, you knew that success was going to be temporary. Since the late ’90s, WWE expanded to the point that all forms of sports and entertainment were its competition.
I agreed to go to TNA because I missed the business. I love performing in front of an audience. I love entertaining people. The thought of sitting at home or going out on my boat every day drove me nuts—and I love my boat!
Every time I went back to WWE after we amicably parted ways in 2008, I pitched ideas about being a manager for a Superstar, or the General Manager/authority figure of Raw or SmackDown. It didn’t happen. That was okay. I wanted to keep working, which was a good thing, because I had to support myself, my wife, and, well, pay money to two ex-wives. I also wanted to be there for my kids. As someone with two daughters, I can tell you that weddings are expensive.
From my first conversation with TNA, everyone at the company treated me with incredible respect. And then there was the offer they made me.
&
nbsp; My contract was a six-figure deal to work sixty-five dates a year. More dates could be added if it was mutually agreeable. It wasn’t WWE money, but it was very good. The TNA contract also allowed me to continue making promotional appearances with independent wrestling companies and to further my work with the corporate partners. We were in discussion to expand the North and South Carolina lottery concept into several other states.
TNA had a national cable TV partner in the United States in Spike TV. The company also had a strong fan base in Europe. Some said the following was stronger than in the States.
TNA had a combination of established stars that included Sting, Kurt Angle, Mick Foley, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Sean Waltman, and the Dudley Boyz, though they couldn’t use the Dudley name. They called themselves Team 3D. Then I learned about the outstanding roster of young talent who worked hard to build the company brand.
From the time the Jarretts started the company in 2002, if you removed WWE mainstays from the equation, almost every major name in our business over the last twenty-five years had appeared in TNA.
When I looked at what the company had planned in terms of building out other parts of its business with consumer products and merchandise and put all of that together, it seemed like the company had a lot of potential and was headed in the right direction, not to compete with WWE, but to carve out its own niche.
For my on-air role, the idea was that I would create a group of stars to manage. That group would cross paths with Hulk’s, and from that, different matches and rivalries would be created.
My debut on the first show of 2010 was designed to give the audience a strong sense of who I would be aligned with: AJ Styles.