Ric Flair on His Hospital Stay, Travels and His Documentary

In anticipation for the upcoming ESPN 30 For 30: Nature Boy special, Ric Flair appeared on the Cheap Heat Podcast where he spoke about his hospital stay, travels and the documentary.

The documentary is set to air on November 7 at 10pm, with the aim being to take a look at the life and career of the man many consider to be the greatest professional wrestler of all time.

Flair was asked first about which portions of the documentary were most hard to watch:

“The only hard part was what I experienced with the stuff with Reid. I expected negative comments from my kids. That didn’t surprise me and I couldn’t be upset about it. What people need to understand is that I am not a Doctor, or Lawyer, I am a Wrestler.”

He spoke next about his career bringing him around the world:

“Just until the last 15 years or so, if you didn’t work you didn’t get paid and if you are the World Champion, NWA World Champion, you worked and that was it. You can be in San Juan one night; literally, I was thinking about my worst week in travel. San Juan to St Louis; St Louis to Sydney, Australia; Sydney, Australia to Auckland, New Zealand; Auckland, New Zealand to Tokyo, Japan. How is that for a week? And I wrestled an hour every night. I was excited; I wouldn’t have wanted to miss it. But looking back on it now, you can see why I had wanted a cocktail. That is a lot of air time, and the Flight Attendants back then were fun. It’s a different time period now; they are all my age.”

Finally, he talks at length about his hospital stay and who he spoke with while he was in:

“I didn’t because I know a lot of people came to visit me that I don’t even remembered. They gave me a 20% chance of living, and all my kids came. Ashley [Charlotte] Flair came all the way down from China and the Doctor’s told her to go say goodbye to your dad. They gave me a 20% of living, and of course I don’t remember any of it at the time because I think I already induced the coma, but when I got home and got my phone finally, which they wouldn’t give me because still when I first woke up I wasn’t necessarily me yet, but i had 376 texts on my phone and I still haven’t returned them all.”

“The reason being is that it isn’t because I was being discourteous, but when you text someone back and tell them that you appreciate their text and that I am doing much better, you know that they will respond back if that makes sense. I started that and did it with about ten people, and I said that I just can’t do this. I don’t know how to group text people, so what I did was I called them all and brought them up to speed; it’s much easier to do that, so there’s still people I haven’t thanked yet, but I will see them once I become more active in my life. I have some appearances in November and December so I will see a lot of people and I hope to be at 100% by WrestleMania where I will see everybody.”

With H/T to WrestlingInc for the transcription.

If you are interested in seeing the documentary on the life and career of Flair, you can see the following trailer, which may prepare you it.

ESPN explores the legend of "The Nature Boy" Ric Flair

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