Former ECW World Champion Shane Douglas has stated his hope that this Christmas Ric Flair can find whatever peace he’s searching for as he asserts his belief that the real-life Richard Fliehr no longer exists.
Speaking to WSI – Wrestling Shoot Interviews, The Franchise told an alarming story of his experience with Ric Flair following The Nature Boy’s previous brush with death that saw him in a coma:
“When he came out (of his coma), he seemed to have turned over a new leaf and stayed sober for a while. He seemed to be going well, and by all appearances, seemed happy to me at that time.”
“Not long after that, there was a Big Time Wrestling show out of Boston down near Pittsburgh in the Rostraver Ice Garden. My nephew had driven me down. So Flair was there. Got paid a ton of money. He went out in the very first segment and did a three-minute promo. He needed my nephew to drive him back to the airport. So my nephew left. This is the top of the show. I’m on late in the show.”
“Like an hour after the show’s over, my nephew still hasn’t come back and we’re like an hour from the airport. He ended up finally coming back an hour and a half, two hours after the show had ended. He apologized. He said, ‘We weren’t a mile down the road and Ric made me pull into a bar’, and he said he stopped at every bar going to the airport. I’m like, well that obviously means he’s drinking again, right?”
“That’s one of those things like, if you survived this medically induced coma, straighten up. My take now is, for what it’s worth, and I’m not trying to play a psychoanalyst, I don’t think Ric Flair, first of all, Richard Fliehr no longer exists. He’s allowed Ric Flair to take over that body, and there’s a real danger of that because that is truly a mental illness. We are playing a role. I’m very keenly aware of the differences of Shane Douglas and Troy Martin, and I hope they’re very different people.”
Shane Douglas Hopes Ric Flair Can Find “Whatever Peace He’s Searching For”
Shane Douglas then explained that he believes Ric Flair is trying to make sure he dies in a wrestling ring and that anything else might be too normal for the sixteen-time champion of the world:
“The last match thing, full disclosure, I didn’t watch the whole thing but I did watch clips of it and close friends of mine kept asking, ‘Why is he doing this? Why is he doing this?’ Because let’s face it, he’s one of those guys, we get this question all the time, you know, who’s on your Mount Rushmore? You got to put Flair there, right? His legacy is solid. A hundred years from now, wrestling fans will be talking about and studying Ric Flair’s work.”
“So I found it odd, like what could he possibly do in that ring that would not detract from that? Because let’s face it, none of us can today do what we did 30 years ago, unfortunately, so why do it? My take on it is, I think that Ric Flair now thinks the only ending to that book is you got to die in the ring. I mean, you can’t die in a hotel room someplace. That’s so normal.”
“The oddity of that is that right there in the front row are your kids and grandkids and your co-workers that you admire. Then we’re hearing these stories. It’s true that he blacked out twice or something in the match. Like those are major, major, dangers for somebody that’s in his condition, pacemaker and everything.”
“I wish for Ric and at this time of year, Christmas, my Christmas wish for Ric Flair, Richard Fliehr, is that he can find whatever peace he’s searching for and live out the rest of his life that’s 50 more years, happy, and able to look at his grandkids and see just the wonder there.”