On March 31st Ric Flair inducted The Great Muta into the WWE Hall of Fame.
The pair wrestled numerous times throughout their careers, and there is a great deal of respect between the two men. However, Flair’s induction speech came under fire online for being rambling, with many fans commenting that he spent more time talking about his own exploits and time in Japan than Muta.
This was followed by a report that suggested Flair’s speech hadn’t been well received backstage, while Konnan’s for Rey Mysterio was incredibly popular.
Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer has now given an update on how Flair’s speech played out. Meltzer stated that all speeches were shown on a teleprompter and pre-approved by WWE. Everyone stayed on script except Flair.
The Nature Boy only returned to what was on the teleprompter for the very end of his segment.
“For the Hall of Fame, there was a teleprompter where the planned speeches were written and pretty much everyone except Ric Flair read them so what was said was planned out and approved. Flair called Great Muta the best Japanese wrestler ever (he said the same when he inducted Tatsumi Fujinami) and talked about showing him around Atlanta when he first came to WCW…
The thing is that Flair didn’t read the teleprompter at all and just gave a speech having nothing to do with the script until the very end when he got back on script. The stuff listing Riki Choshu and Tenryu and Fujinami was actually the stuff that was in his script.”
Ric Flair Hits Out At WWE For “Breaking Tradition”
Speaking on his To Be The Man podcast following WrestleMania, Ric Flair took WWE to task over not featuring his daughter in the main event. Flair claimed that WWE had “broke tradition” by not putting the match featuring the Royal Rumble winner and current champion in the main event.
Night one of WrestleMania 39 was headlined by the Undisputed Tag Team Title clash between The Usos and Sami Zayn & Kevin Owens.