And that's where I come to Nature Boy Ric Flair.
Ric Flair is a 16-time World's Heavyweight Champion, a 2-time WWE Hall of Famer and an NWA Hall of Famer ("NWA 2008 HOF") (wrap your mind around that for a moment, sports fans). He has seen it all and done it all. He has dined with elite, wrestled in front of 190,000 people for North Korean dictators (Schwartz, 2014), been to the top of the mountain and has the countless tall tales to show for it. It was a career that few could imagine and fewer still could step away from.
But at age 65, Flair is now at the point in his life where he has exhausted every feasible opportunity to wrestle competitively and he has been over the last few years slowly growing into retirement. He still moonlights on WWE television, working with younger talent and making appearances at card shows, industry events and even some small, independent wrestling shows. But for someone who wrestled for the better part of 40 years (!!!) the adjustment from rock star to just plain old Richard Morgan Fliehr has not been easy. Imagine if Brett Favre had been able to go out and sling it for 40 years and then suddenly the body starts to fail and the desire is not quite there and it all stops. It would be tremendously hard. That is the reality of a wrestler like Flair. I write this thinking about how Flair just went in for some surgeries last week (Johnson, 2014) and how he has struggled to adapt to civilian life as he has gotten older and it takes away a little of my joy. Ric Flair is one of my two celebrity heroes. I met him many years ago and told him so. I have always admired his tenacity, his drive, and the lasting connection he made with his audience. We sports fans are used to our athletes growing old but riding off into the sunset with grace. Well for wrestling athletes like Flair there isn't much grace beyond that horizon. All too often, wrestlers cannot walk away into civilian life after years and years of rental cars, hotel rooms, being on the road, the boys in the back, and most importantly going out night after night in front of 10,000 cheering and screaming fans and soaking in the adulation 280 days a year.
That high, is too much to resist. You too would struggle to adapt if you had to quit that drug cold turkey too.
References
Johnson, V. (2014, September 16). Ric Flair recovering from multiple surgeries, will miss Smackdown. Retrieved September 20, 2014.
NWA 2008 HOF. (n.d.). Retrieved September 20, 2014.
Schwartz, N. (2014, January 22). Ric Flair describes wrestling in North Korea in front of 190,000 people. Retrieved September 20, 2014.