Ric Flair doesn’t think WWE has an athleticism problem when it comes to developing its next generation of stars. His issue is that he believes too many young wrestlers are learning by “practice wrestling” each other instead of getting the kind of real-world experience he had coming up.
Speaking to NewsNation, Flair was discussing why he doesn’t attend many of Charlotte Flair’s matches anymore when the conversation turned to WWE and AEW. Since Flair is affiliated with AEW, showing up at WWE events isn’t exactly as simple as it once was.
Flair doesn’t believe there’s some massive talent gap between the two companies either. In his eyes, the biggest difference is that WWE has decades of history behind it while AEW is still relatively young.
“The only distance — the only thing in between, in my opinion, WWE and AEW is the length of all the time the business has been open. You’re talking about 50 or 70 years as opposed to five years.”
When it comes to the wrestlers themselves, Flair believes both companies have plenty of athletic talent. He sees a bigger difference in how WWE and AEW allow those wrestlers to perform.
“But there’s equal athleticism on both. Um, Tony’s a daredevil and he lets the guys go wide open. The WWE is like, you know, trying to stay in that G-rated for commercials.”
That’s when Flair turned his attention to WWE’s developmental system, and he wasn’t exactly sold on how things are being done. Flair estimated WWE has close to 120 wrestlers in developmental at the moment.
“The problem is the WWE is — their developmental program has got 120 people in it, close to that.”
Flair’s bigger problem isn’t the number itself, though. He believes those wrestlers spend too much time training against one another without getting enough opportunities to go out and learn the business by working different opponents in front of different crowds.
“And they’re trying to bring these kids up, and all they’ve done is practice wrestle each other with no real opportunity to go out and learn how to work, and they’re on TV one time and, man, you don’t — make it, impress somebody, you’re not there next week.”
The host then asked how things worked when Flair was learning the business, and his answer was pretty simple. Instead of spending most of his time inside one developmental system, Flair was constantly traveling and wrestling wherever he could.
“Yeah, we wrestled — I wrestled all over the country.”
That also meant Flair got to work with wrestlers who brought completely different styles and levels of experience to the ring. His list included some of the biggest and toughest names from multiple generations.
“And there’s nobody I didn’t wrestle. I mean, I wrestled — I mean, from Bruiser Brody to Stan Hansen to Lou Thesz, Harley Race, Pat O’Connor. I mean, I wrestled all of them.”
That’s really Flair’s problem with WWE’s system — not that today’s wrestlers aren’t talented, but that he believes talent can only learn so much by repeatedly working with the same developmental group. For someone who learned by traveling everywhere and wrestling just about everybody, Flair clearly thinks today’s prospects need more chances to learn the hard way before the television cameras start rolling.
What do you think about Ric Flair’s criticism of WWE’s developmental system? Do younger wrestlers need more experience outside the Performance Center before being put on television? Let us know in the
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.
