This is a script for a video on my YouTube channel. You can find the full video by clicking Here.
For this video I want to take you back to a different time in wrestling. Back when there was one major company, a distant second and an even more distant everyone else. Amongst that everyone else, Ring of Honor was a growing company that showed promise, but it had been built on the efforts of it's largely home grown talent, many of whom would become superstars, but weren't there yet. They needed something more if they were going to grow past being a small company reliant on DVD sales. They were going to need a star to give them legitimacy with the wider wrestling audience, and of all people they managed to recruit the dirtiest player in the game. But what would happen when Ric Flair would enter Ring of Honor? First we'll look at the changing landscape of ROH at the time, then where Ric Flair's career was, and the timeline of his relationship with the indie. Finally, we'll try to figure out what went wrong and how it happened.
ROH in 2009
The late 2000's were a very pivotal time in Ring of Honor history in terms of changes that impacted the entire company. Since the start of the promotion all wrestlers and storylines had book booked largely by one man, Gabe Sapolsky. Gabe had spent the previous years before ROH working for ECW but more importantly, he spent those years sitting under the learning tree of Paul Heyman himself. Gabe's booking from ROH's early years is still fondly remembered by fans two decades later, from the beloved 'Summer of Punk, to the nearly two year reign of Samoa Joe as World Champion. Many, Many wrestlers that Gabe brought into Ring of Honor went on to become big stars, proving that he had an extraordinary eye for talent. On the screen right now is not even a complete list of the sheer talent Gabe had an influence on in their early careers.
In late 2008 then owner Cary Silkin made the decision to remove Gabe from his position as Booker after about six and a half years. Gabe who admitted afterwards that he had been feeling burned out after putting all of his focus into ROH, was great at drawing the fan that wanted a stronger style of wrestling, but Cary felt that the company would need to change it's product to be more accessible in order to grow the company. Cary was mostly a fairly passive owner, leaving the day to day operations to his booker and other staff, but stepped in when he saw the company's decline in live attendance and dvd sales throughout 2008, which were vital in keeping the company going. Aside from any revenue ROH made, Cary had put a lot of his own money into the company, and thus wanted to recoup his losses.
When Gabe left, Cary replaced him with an interesting choice, an active wrestler who appeared to have a good relationship with a lot of the ROH locker room, 'Scrap Iron' Adam Pearce, who at the time was also the NWA World champion wrestling all over the US and internationally. The same Adam Pearce seen on WWE television today. When Pearce was tasked with wrestling Roman Reigns on Smackdown a couple of years ago I hoped we might see shades of the old 'Scrap Iron', but sadly we didn't. When Adam took over the ROH product there became a very clear change. The excellent quality of wrestling was still there especially in their main events, but the overall tone of the shows felt lighter and more family friendly. One of Gabe's final projects, a dark emo stable known as the Age of the Fall, became very much toned down in terms of its violent nature. This is a group that debuted by hanging an already bleeding Jay Briscoe by his feet from the loop that just been used for a ladder match. The group's leader Jimmy Jacobs then proceeded to cut a promo standing underneath, as Briscoe's blood dripped down onto Jacobs' white suit, creating one of the most stunning moments in ROH history. Under Pearce there was none of that, and the groups future prospect was quickly separated from the group and pushed as a singles star. That prospect was a young Tyler Black, known today as Seth Rollins.
The changes to the product can maybe be best visualised in the transformation of one of ROH's top wrestlers of the time, Austin Aries. Around the time of Gabe's last shows Aries was presented as a very serious wrestler. The man who ended Samoa Joe's epic world title reign, who was going to time limit draws with Bryan Danielson, and who was battling Jimmy Jacobs in brutal matches. By mid 2009 Aries was almost a completely different wrestler, undergoing a vast makeover, adopting flashy new ring gear, and style. This was validated by Aries defeating Jerry Lynn to become the first ever two time ROH World champion, a title that he held until Tyler Black was ready to ascend to the throne in the following year. The newly christened 'A Double' felt like the figurehead of ROH's new direction, which was propelled forward by another major change, ROH's first foray into national television.
On March 21st 2009 Ring of Honor debuted ROH on HDNet. While HDNet was a start for the company, it wasn't the most accessible channel as to my understanding you needed an extra package on your cable to have the channel. Years later HDNets owner Mark Cuban would sell the channel, and it would become known as AXS tv, the current home of Impact Wrestling. The weekly one hour show at the time felt very different to the televised products of WWE and TNA of the time. One reason for this was ROH taping as many as six episodes over a weekend, usually from the former ECW arena. This meant that you only saw the big stars of ROH every few weeks as opposed to every single week on Raw. As a fan at the time I liked this, as I might get a thirty minute Bryan Danielson match one week, and it gave time enough to look forward to seeing Bryan wrestle again in a few weeks. The show was clearly aimed less as ROH's already die hard fanbase and more at casual or new fans. Character babyfaces like Delirious and weirdly, the Necro Butcher were featured, as well as traditional heels like the Embassy who a new fan would instantly recognise to be the bad guys. The birth of the HDNet show also brought something ROH had rarely used in the past, an on screen authority figure. Jim Cornette had previously, and would again in future take on the role, especially during the well regarded ROH vs CZW feud, but ROH wanted a bigger name for their HDNet show, which is where Ric Flair comes in.
Leave the Memories Alone
Much like for Ring of Honor, 2008 was something of a big year for Ric Flair too. Flair entered the year with a storyline in which Vince McMahon would force him to retire the next time he lost a match, which led to many near misses for Flair. This was slowly leading to one of the biggest matches of his at the time thirty six year long in ring career, which would take place at Wrestlemania 24. Throughout the whole of Wrestlemania weekend you could say that Ric Flair was the star attraction. On the Saturday night he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as the featured inductee, along side Mae Young, Rocky Johnson, High Chief Peter Miavia the Father and Grandfather of The Rock, famed announcer Gordon Solie, Florida promoter Eddie Graham and Gerald and Jack Brisco. Flair would again be inducted in 2012 as a member of the Four Horsemen, making him the first of currently eight wrestlers to be inducted twice, as groups such as the nWo, DX, the Hart Foundation and Harlem Heat would follow.
On March 30th at Wrestlemania 24, Ric wrestled what was to be his final match against Shawn Michaels. While not a perfect match, it had enough story and drama in it that fans were truly along for the ride, capped off by Shawn's "I'm sorry, I love you" moment. Fairly early in Shawn would suffer a cracked rib which would go on to hinder him for the rest of the match. The injury came when Shawn would perform an Asai moonsault to the outside of the ring, missing Flair and landing ribs first on the spine of the Spanish announcers table. Apart from this scary moment Ric Flair claimed while discussing the match on his podcast that the rest of the match went according to plan, and was always going to end with the Sweet Chin Music. He also claimed that the famous line from Shawn Michaels hadn't been planned, or at least Flair didn't know it was coming. Clearly production must have known that the line was coming since the camera was there to get a perfect shot of Shawn mouthing the words, but that doesn't necessarily mean that Flair knew.
On Raw the next night, the show ended with tributes to Ric Flair. He was honored in the ring by many of his peers, from Triple H, to members of the Horsemen, to his family including a pre-wrestling career Charlotte, and eventually the entire roster. After the programme went off the air Flair, who by this point had no more tears left in his body was even shown ultimate respect by the Undertaker in a somewhat in and out of character moment. The entire weekend felt like the perfect sendoff for the Nature Boy. More on that later... While Ric would make a couple of appearances on Raw it still seemed that his days in the ring were done.
Ric Flair and Ring Of Honor
So what did Ric Flair actually do in Ring of Honor? On March 13th 2009 ROH presented a show they titled 'Stylin' and Profilin' because of Flair's presence. He was there to observe the main event ROH World title match between Nigel McGuinness, who was nearing the end of his epic sixteen month long reign and his challenger for the night Brent Albright, the man briefly known as Gunner Scott for a few months on Smackdown. The match would end in a disqualification as Claudio Castagnoli would interfere on Nigel's behalf, and Flair would actually enter the ring to make the save.
Around this time Ring of Honor would announce that Flair would become an 'ROH Ambassador' and heavy promoted him for their HDNet show. He would make his first TV appearance on the May 2nd 2009 HDNet episode. He begins the show with an in ring promo complimenting ROH in the most Ric Flair way, by claiming that the next Flair, Shawn Michaels or Triple H might be in the ROH locker room, which is not exactly what a die hard ROH fan would have wanted to hear given that many of them loved the indie for it not being like WWE. He was then interrupted by Austin Aries, planting the seeds for what would come later. On the following week's episode Flair would appear in a backstage interview talking up the roster whose names I bet he couldn't have told us without a prompter. On the May 16th episode he heads to the ring again, this time to announce a four way match for the ROH World title in which the new champion who by this point had dethroned Nigel, Jerry Lynn, would defend against Austin Aries, Bryan Danielson and Tyler Black. On the June 6th episode, Ric would be interviewed before the four way that I mentioned before, and would talk about the importance of being in a World title match. As best as I can tell all of these episodes were taped in early April at the second ever HDNet tapings. On the June 13th episode that would have been the first of a new set of tapings, commentators Dave Prazak and Mike Hogewood note that Ric Flair had stepped down as ROH's ambassador, and he wouldn't be seen in the company again.
Aside from the HDnet show, at this time ROH was still running events that were primarily released on DVD, a huge aspect of their income especially in the early years. While Ric Flair appeared on the aforementioned 'Stylin and Profilin' show, he was next advertised to appear at The Hunt Begins on April 17th in Montreal, but apparently no showed the event. Undoubtedly the biggest wrestling related catastrophe to ever hit that city. Following this event, Ring of Honor would proceed to sue Ric Flair for money that he had been paid in advance to appear. The lawsuit revealed that Ring of Honor were paying Flair ten thousand dollars per appearance, and thirty five thousand on top of that to be their Ambassador on the HDNet show, though ROH was claiming that Flair owed them a total of forty grand. According to a 2011 article by Cageside seats, part of Ric's conditions for bookings included a refundable five thousand dollar deposit, and this may contribute to the amount ROH was owed for not being their Ambassador and no showing in Montreal.
When Ric Flair officially left Ring of Honor, he claimed that he did so to go back to WWE, which he technically did, making a very brief comeback, and by brief I mean two weeks. He would get into an in ring dispute with Randy Orton on May 25th 2009's Raw, and a week later he would receive a dreaded Orton punt kick and would disappear again. It turns out based on what happened next that Flair may have used his WWE link to get out of his ROH deal, in order to to explore some other opportunities. In November of 2009 Flair would break his in ring retirement, wrestling on the Hulkamania: Let the Battle Begin tour in Australia. I won't go into too much detail here as the tour definitely deserves it's own deep dive, but Flair crucially would wrestle in four main events, losing to Hulk Hogan every time.
The next time Ric Flair would be seen on a major platform would be a night etched in the memories of every TNA fan of the time. January 4th 2010, the debut of the ill fated attempt by TNA compete head to head with Raw, which only lasted around three months. The first episode featured a former WWE star either debuting or returning in what felt like every single segment, including Ric Flair who would be paired with TNA champion AJ Styles. Flair would stay in TNA for two years, wrestling twelve matches before eventually making his way back to occasional WWE appearances. Michael Bochicchio, which by the way I apologise if I'm pronouncing wrong, is a former friend of Ric who I'll return to in the next section, alleged in a 2011 interview with Cageside Seats that TNA offered Ric a four hundred thousand dollars per year deal. Given how Ring of Honor weren't using him on every show, he was never going to make the kind of money TNA was offering while with the much smaller Ring Of Honor. Until his to date final match in 2022, his last would have been a loss to Sting on a 2011 episode of Impact, but more problems continued to follow Flair.
From what I can tell ROH eventually sued Flair in 2011, citing that he had been with TNA for long enough that he feasibly could have paid them back by then, but from what I can tell the ROH vs Flair lawsuit never really went anywhere. I've also seen it claimed that when Sinclair Broadcasting purchased the ROH in 2012, they showed no interest in perusing the previous owners debt, which might be accurate as Cary seems to be claiming that it was his own money and not ROH's. Over the years Ric Flair has been fairly quiet about Ring of Honor, but in March of this year he was directly asked about them on his podcast. Ric claimed talking to Conrad Thompson that the deal fell through when someone asked him to bad mouth WWE in a promo, but never really explains any further. In his exact words, Flair says "They asked me to go out and say that they were a bigger product than WWE, but I said I'll absolutely never do that. They said you're under contract, say what you're told and I said I'm under contract for that? Not for that, I won't do it. Thats all it was, simple as that." He also briefly implies that ROH's plan was for him to go to a strip club before the show, but that gets glossed over so we still don't know what that meant. Flair doesn't say who "they" are who told him to do this, and moves on to burying Bocchichio. Around this time ROH would never really bury other promotions on screen except within agreed upon promotional feuds with CZW and later Chikara, so this claim doesn't feel like the true story. With respect to Conrad, he could have grilled Ric on his statement a bit more, maybe ask for clarification. Flairs 2023 comments caused Cary Silkin to again reiterate that Flair owed him the forty one grand, not sure where that extra thousand came from, for appearances Flair didn't make. Money Cary will likely never see quite frankly.
In the podcast Flair also claims that the ROH deal was put together by the owner of HighSpots, Michael Bochicchio who I mentioned earlier, who has had his own financial disputes with Ric. In researching for this video I found a story of Flair giving Highspots an NWA championship belt as collateral for a loan. According to Highspots, Flair never repaid the loan leading to them attempting to sell the belt, but they quickly found that it wasn't theirs to sell, as Flair had previously used the same belt as collateral to a company called Conbraco Industries for a different loan. Conbraco by the way was a plumbing heating valve company making this even stranger. The article I found this information from at Cageside Seats claims that Flair also gave Conbraco more items as collateral, most notably his first WWE Hall of Fame Ring, and the Rolex watch that Shawn Michaels gifted him following Wrestlemania 24, and weirdly an autographed poster of Michael Jordan. Weeks later Dave Meltzer would clarify that the owner of Conbraco was a friend of Flair so that at least makes some sense. To be clear though these are allegations, and the money disputes between Flair and Highspots are very, very messy, so I'll include a link to the multiple articles in my blog which can be found in the video description if you would like some further reading. Frankly I wouldn't have known about any of this had Flair not mentioned the Highspots owner instead of focusing on Ring of Honor.
To be clear, as best as I can find, Ric Flair has never given a clear and concise explanation for his Ring of Honor run, other than his badmouthing WWE claim. He did reference this same claim against ROH in 2022 on an earlier version of his podcast with Mark Madden, another long time friend of Flair who he fell out with. There is however another theory about what might have happened, but I want to make it clear that this shouldn't be treated as absolute fact, and will get quite dark. It's been speculated that Flair made the deal with ROH partly to guarantee his son Reid a spot on their roster, only for this to never happen when Reid was arrested for driving while impaired right before Ric would appear for the company, but after he had been advertised. The timeline for this does add up, as Reid spent much of 2008 training to wrestle with Harley Race, and made his in ring debut in December of that year teaming with his brother David. He was arrested on March 4th, right before Flair's first ROH appearance and a again on April 26th, which was after the show that Flair didn't turn up for. Maybe ROH denied using Reid, who according to his Cagematch stats had only wrestled one match by the time of Flairs first appearance, (not including the two he had in WCW as a child), and so Flair reneged on his deal. When Reid sadly passed away at the age of twenty five, Mike Johnson of PWInsider as well as other obituaries noted that he had been slated to work for ROH but his arrest caused this not to happen, with Johnson in particular claiming that this might have led to Flair deciding to no longer appear for the company.
When I first read this I was very skeptical, as Flair probably could have got Reid straight into the WWE system with his connections, so why would he have joined an indie just to get him a spot. When Rey Mysterio returned to WWE it was fairly common knowlege that he was doing it to ensure that Dominik would get an opportunity to bypass the indies and train within WWE, so the idea that Flair couldn't do this initially felt suspect to me. At first I wondered if Flair might have felt that Reid should go through the indies because of what happened when David Flair was pushed straight onto Nitro and that didn't end well. Maybe that could have been Flairs approach? It turns out though that years later in a 30 for 30 documentary about Ric Flair, Triple H explained that Reid actually was on course to join WWE, but wasn't signed as he failed two drug tests, so maybe WWE just wasn't an option for the time being.
It's ironic in a way that the wrestler most famous for embodying the lifestyle of the rich and famous, the limousine riding, jet flying and all the rest son of a gun, famous for "living the gimmick", has been plagued by money troubles in the latter years of his life that grew more and more complicated. In researching Flair's life around this time I read some truly harrowing stories around his finances, his relationships, and even his health. They're out there if you choose to find them, but I don't want this to turn into Dark Side of the Ring. I'll instead leave you with a reminder of the amazing high's of Flair's long and successful time in the ring, because as the song chosen for Flair's retirement says, 'leave the memories alone.
Sources (that are directly referenced in the video)
Sorry line not planned https://talksport.com/sport/wrestling/692195/ric-flair-shawn-michaels-wwe-wrestlemania-2008-match/
Ric Flair on his time in Ring of Honor: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agXGcnDWfmo
Flair saying he would never bad talk WWE and mentioning ROH in 2022: https://wrestlingnews.co/wwe-news/ric-flair-says-he-walked-out-on-roh-after-they-asked-him-to-bad-mouth-the-wwe
Highspots owner https://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/6/8/2213881/michael-bochicchio-of-highspots-talks-about-their-legal-dispute-with
ROH sues Flair https://bleacherreport.com/articles/335844-breaking-news-roh-sues-ric-flair
Highspots sues Flair https://www.cagesideseats.com/2010/8/3/1603875/highspots-sues-ric-flair-over-lack
Highspots sues Flair 2: https://www.cagesideseats.com/2011/5/26/2192312/tnas-ric-flair-charged-with-contempt-of-court-in-highspots-belt-case
PWInsider Reid: https://www.pwinsider.com/article/76485/reid-flair-passes-away.html?p=1
'The Wrestler in real life' profile: http://grantland.com/features/the-wrestler-real-life/
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