Ric Flair recently had fans worried that he might wrestle even more matches, but now it appears it’s no longer the case. “The Nature Boy” came out of retirement at the age of 73 at the Ric Flair’s Last Match event back on July 31 in Nashville, in which he teamed with Andrade El Idolo to face Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal. The match wasn’t particularly well-received, mostly because Flair passed out twice during the bout due to dehydration, but by the end, fans were just happy that the 16-time world champion managed to end the bout (mostly) unscathed.
However, shortly after Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat announced he was stepping back in the ring for the first time in 12 years, Flair teased the idea of training again. He also openly admitted on his podcast that he regretted making the retirement claim within weeks of the match happening.
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Steamboat coming back makes me want to come back again,” Flair said last month. “I went back up to Lincoln and started training again. What else is there to do?”
However, Flair cleared the air on the latest To Be The Man and firmly stated he won’t’ wrestle again — “When I say it inspires me to want to do it again, it’s not that I couldn’t. I will stand by this. I wish I hadn’t said it was my last match, and I don’t want to disappoint a bunch of fans by doing it again, but I got myself into good shape. Then I made what turned out to be a drastic mistake by not hydrating, but I feel great. I feel like as long as you’re healthy, you should do what you want to do when you get to my age. I mean, you know, I feel like we limit ourselves to what people think we should be doing sometimes as opposed to what we’re doing. What the hell? I can do that and probably better’, and he probably will. You know he’ll look better. He always has and always will.”
He also discussed how different the business is now compared to when he was in his prime — “The difference is, and I’ve gotta qualify this so everybody understands what I’m saying. The difference is that you had to, number one, you wrestled every possible imaginable character and style in the world, and if you’re in Japan, you had to fight for your life. Now, it’s a much more controlled environment. Let’s put it like that. Of course, the choreography is totally different. There was no choreography. You just went out there and hoped that you had the chemistry and through practice and trial and error you found the right guys. I would like to think I found a lot of guys that I had great chemistry with, from Dusty to Harley to Terry.”
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