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The "Nature Boy" Ric Flair (born February 25, 1949 in Memphis, Tennessee) has been one of the leading personalities in professional wrestling since the 1970s.
His birth name, depending on the particular documents examined, was Fred Phillips, Fred Demaree, or Fred Stewart. He was one of several thousand children adopted through the Tennessee Children's Home Society, an adoption agency that was revealed in 1950 to have fraudulently induced numerous mothers to give up their children for adoption. His adoptive parents, who received him when he was less than a month old, were a gynecologist (father) and a theater writer (mother) in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina, Minnesota who named him Richard Morgan Fliehr.
Flair played football at the University of Minnesota while in a pre-medical academic program, but he dropped out before receiving a degree. He then worked as a bouncer before meeting Ken Patera, a former Olympic weightlifter who had established himself in professional wrestling. Patera encouraged Flair to pursue a wrestling career, and Flair soon joined the Minneapolis-based American Wrestling Association (AWA), working his first match for that promotion on December 10, 1972.
After three years with AWA, Flair joined the NWA affiliated Jim Crockett Promotions based in North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia. On the rise, he suffered a severe back injury in a 1975 plane crash in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Flair recovered from the injury and won the United States Heavyweight Championship five times, then won the NWA World Heavyweight Championship for the first time by defeating Dusty Rhodes in 1981. Harley Race won the title from Flair in 1983. Flair regained the title at Starrcade '83 in Greensboro, North Carolina in a steel cage match. Flair would go one to win the NWA title 7 more times.
Throughout the 1980s Flair became affiliated with The Four Horsemen stable, who in various incarnations consisted of manager James J. Dillon, Ole and Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Sid Vicious, Lex Luger and Barry Windham. Flair's main rivals for the NWA title were Dusty Rhodes and Ron Garvin, both of who defeated Flair for the NWA title, only to lose them back to him later.
After a contract dispute with WCW head Jim Herd, Flair left WCW (a group run by Ted Turner which had just abdicated from the NWA "alliance") in 1991 and had his first run in the WWF including winning the WWF Title in a 30-man Royal Rumble.
Flair returned to WCW in 1993 where he stayed until the company was bought out by Vince McMahon's WWF. The Four Horsemen stable was revived with Flair leading Dean Malenko, Chris Benoit, and former Chicago Bears star Steve McMichael.
Flair lost the company's final match on March 26, 2001 to his longtime rival Sting. After a brief hiatus from pro wrestling Flair returned to the WWF in late 2001 as the "co-owner" of the company. Flair still wrestles in the WWE (the WWF's new name) and has joined forces with multi-time WWE Champion Triple H to form the stable Evolution. He engaged in a recent (as of 2004) feud with Bret Hart, in which both claimed to be the best wrestler of all time.
Despite his age and his less-than-chiseled physique, Ric Flair can still take on wrestlers half his age. He is "over" in the ring due mostly to his in ring antics, such as his cheating ways (earning him the distinction of being "the dirtiest player in the game"), his trademark strut and his legendary shouting of "WOO!" Even though he is long past his prime as a "main-eventer," he still serves a purpose by getting in the ring and making the younger wrestlers look good.
Since the late 70's, he has worn ornate, fur lined robes of many colors with sequins, and since the mid 80's, his approach to the ring was often heralded by the playing of the Richard Wagner composition Also Sprach Zarathustra (the theme of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey.) The look and sound complemented his cocky in-ring persona.
Late in 2003, WWE released a three-DVD retrospective of Flair's career (focusing mainly on his career prior to 1993), The Ultimate Ric Flair Collection. It became WWE's fastest-selling video package up to that time.
Flair released his autobiography, To Be the Man, in July 2004. The title is taken from one of his catchphrases, "To be the man, you gotta BEAT the man!". Flair is an icon in the Carolinas on a par with Michael Jordan and Richard Petty, and he has made the Charlotte, North Carolina area his home since the days of the Crockett promotion. His name has been mentioned from time to time as a possible candidate for governor of North Carolina.
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