Ric Flair’s reputation as wrestling’s biggest partier is legendary, but Tony Schiavone says the Nature Boy wasn’t always drinking as much as everyone thought. According to Schiavone, Flair sometimes made sure everyone else got hammered because he enjoyed watching them make fools of themselves.
Speaking on The 10 Count, Schiavone looked back at the insane Jim Crockett Promotions schedule, when wrestlers would work a Friday night house show, party afterwards, catch an early flight the next morning and still have television waiting for them.
One flight in particular has stayed with him. Schiavone recalled boarding a plane after a Friday night show in Raleigh, North Carolina, alongside Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson and Ric Flair. Before the plane had even taken off, Flair was already in full Nature Boy mode.
“I distinctly remember they were wrestling on a Friday night, I think it was Raleigh, North Carolina. I got on the plane… Tully gets on, Arn gets on, Flair comes walking down the aisle going, ‘Flight attendant, get that man a Bloody Mary,’ or something like that. And I’m thinking, ‘No, I don’t want one.’”
Seeing Flair seemingly go all night and still have endless energy left Schiavone wondering how he pulled it off. After talking about it with his wife, he eventually asked Arn Anderson. According to Schiavone, Anderson told him Flair wasn’t always drinking as much as people believed.
“I asked Arn, I said, ‘How does he do this?’ He said, ‘He doesn’t drink.’ He said after the show he’ll order everybody a round of kamikazes, and as we’re putting it up, he’s dumping it in the plant. Listen, it’s not, as we all know, it’s not that Ric Flair didn’t drink, but there’d be a lot of times when he was like that, he hadn’t been drinking.”
Schiavone quickly made it clear that Anderson wasn’t saying Flair never drank. The bigger surprise, according to Schiavone, was why Flair liked buying everyone drinks in the first place.
“And Ric’s thing that he’d love to do more than anything else was to get you drunk and you to make a fool out of yourself. That’s what he loved doing.”
Schiavone laughed that Flair hasn’t changed much over the years either. He recently ran into the WWE Hall of Famer at an airport, where Flair immediately tried to get him to have a drink.
“He said, ‘Come on, have a drink with me.’ I said, ‘Absolutely not.’”
When Flair asked if he had quit drinking, Schiavone explained he never really drank much to begin with outside of hanging around wrestlers. He said the Ric Flair fans saw on television wasn’t much different from the man he knew behind the scenes.
“I really never did drink. I mean, I only drank around those guys. And he said, ‘You got to have a drink.’ I said, ‘I’ll sit down and have a soda with you.’ He’s like, ‘Forget it.’ People always ask me, they said, ‘How’s Ric Flair in real life?’ I said, ‘What you see on TV is what you get.’ But that’s the Nature Boy Ric Flair.”
Whether Anderson’s story was true or just one of wrestling’s many road tales, Schiavone clearly believes Flair loved creating the party just as much as being the center of it. Decades later, the stories about the Nature Boy’s larger-than-life lifestyle are still finding their way into wrestling conversations.
Do you think Ric Flair was really pulling one over on everyone, or is this just another classic wrestling road story? Let us know what you think in the comments below.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
