Ric Flair was on his deathbed. The Rolex-wearin’, kiss-stealin’, wheelin-dealin’, limousine-ridin’, jet-flyin’, son of a gun was nothing but a 68-year-old man filled with failing organs and scant hope for survival. Flair never had a bodybuilder’s physique, but down almost 45 pounds, his neck shriveled to the size of his wrist. His flamboyant robes yielded to hospital gowns over 10 chilling days on life support.
Flair was devoted to a bacchanalian lifestyle during which, he says, he drank at least 10 beers and five cocktails a day to survive the two-decade grind of traveling from town to town with 10 pounds of gold around his waist and a reputation as the best wrestler in the world to uphold. Inside the ring, Flair had few peers as a tactician and a showman; at the hotel bar, he was the undisputed champ of last call.
Years of exorbitant drinking caught Flair harder than a Dusty Rhodes bionic elbow to the head — he was at a Georgia hospital in the early stages of kidney failure, on the brink of congestive heart failure, needed a pacemaker and had a section of his bowel removed.
Maybe it was the iron man stamina he showed as the master of the 60-minute match that somehow came to the fore when he was placed in a medically induced coma. Given a 20 percent chance to live by doctors Flair, in professional wrestling parlance, kicked out at the count of 2.
“People say it’s a miracle,” Flair said in an interview with The Associated Press.
There was no script for this comeback. Flair went back to his Atlanta home, he walked the red carpet at a screening for the ESPN Films 30 for 30 documentary “Nature Boy,” premiering Nov. 7, and has autograph signings lined up. He even hinted he’d like to “style and profile” one more time on WWE’s “Monday Night Raw” on the Nov. 13 show at Phillips Arena, showing the wrestling world that diamonds are forever — as, it truly appears, is Ric Flair.
Let’s hear it from the cheap seats: Wooooo!
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