In front of his own daughter, the dirtiest player in the game faked a heart attack.
On July 31, Ric Flair had his final wrestling match in Nashville. A podcast magnate, Conrad Thompson, who promoted the event, later revealed that he “begged” Flair not to do a fake heart attack spot before the match. Nevertheless, Flair told The Post he believed it was crucial to maintain the pace to the finish since he was suffering from dehydration.
“I made the mistake of saying to someone in the match that I felt lightheaded, so everybody jumped way too early [toward the finish of the match], and I just said [in my head] that this was the only way to slow it down,” Flair said.
Flair has faced death twice. The first time was in 1975 when he was on a plane that crashed. The pilot died, and Flair suffered a broken back.
In that moment, Flair wasn’t worried about death. Instead, he was worried about what would happen if he couldn’t wrestle again.
“The other one was ten times more serious,” he said.
It was a multi-year saga. Flair had an intestinal blockage in 2015. He had an emergency appendectomy. He attempted to walk out of the hospital.
“I was determined not to be checked in. I hate hospitals,” Flair said. “I got up, and took the needles out of my arm. It was no big deal — I’ve done that before. But when I was walking out the door I got a hernia.”
During the hernia surgery, they nicked his bowel, resulting in his third surgery in 11 days.
The bowel issues flared back up in 2019, according to him, in what doctors said was a “one in a million” occurrence.
“I was septic — they couldn’t operate on me for 48 hours,” Flair said. “I was in such pain that they put me on life support and they kept me on it for 14 days. For 31 days in ICU, I couldn’t walk. I had no memory. I couldn’t even open a can of Diet Coke. With 31 more days of rehab, learning how to walk again, I finally headed home.”
At the time when he thought he might die, he called everyone he cared about, including those he might have had “beef” with, and told them how much he loved them.
After leaving the hospital, it took him two years to be what he considered “halfway normal.” A year and a change later, he wrestled.
Even though Flair’s performance lagged due to dehydration he suffered, he didn’t get closure from the match, despite the match being critically acclaimed.
A perfectionist, Flair was “fixated” on losing nearly 30 pounds to get down to 218 and succeeded.
The Nature Boy — whose cannabis collaboration with Mike Tyson’s “Tyson 2.0” launches in October — had a few beers out in Nashville the night before, but he went to bed early the next morning. As a result of this, he became dehydrated after waking up before dawn, eating egg whites and coffee, and not eating anything else for the rest of the day.
“I just ran out of fluid,” Flair said. “I didn’t get tired or anything. I was doing 500 free squats in 12 minutes. Find someone my age who can do that, or what I was doing on the stationary bike. Even 50.”
In his final match, Ric Flair faked a heart attack in front of his daughter.
In his final wrestling match, Ric Flair faked a heart attack in front of his daughter.
The Starcast
Dehydration caused Flair to get “lost” during the match. This led to the fake heart attack in front of Megan, which Flair wants to set the record straight about – it was not scripted.
“I did that on my own,” Flair said. “I told the referee [to tell] Jeff Jarrett to slow down. Boom, bring it back down and lay the rest of the match out. And we did that. That was audible to get everybody back on the same track — slow down, I’m fine. It was not the plan. It was not in good taste. I realize that. It was the only thing that was going to keep everybody from going right to the finish.”
