Flair-Highspots Lawsuit

[jdw]

Two things:

 

Bruce has been (lightly) critical of Flair in the past. Mark Madden is the real Ric Flair white knight.

 

This maybe a cop out reply but Bruce is a columnist not a news reporter.

 

Bruce's criticism of Flair has usually been similar to what he wrote above: bad with his money, GOAT, made some mistakes, GOAT, two side to every bad Flair story, GOAT, living life to the fullest. He wrote one short piece in the Torch several years back when one of the local papers had an article of the trainwreck. It was as close to real critical as Bruce got, and even then a bit tempered. Things have gotten much worse for Ric since.

 

Bruce isn't a news reporter. But he's written a ton on Ric over the years, the majority of it going down the path of The Greatness Of Flair. That's the irony of Bruce talking about Context and wanting Balance out of reporters pointing out that Ric is an utter fuck up out of the ring: Bruce's writing on Ric haven't been balanced through the years. They largely follow the path of Our Hero Ric.

 

Pretty much why I poke him on it. The contrast to his writing on say Hogan is pretty wide.

 

I used to think that Flair had compromising pictures of Bruce Mitchell. But if Flair did he would sold them by now.

 

John

[Paul Jacobi]

I'm pretty sure Hogan made more money in WCW in the salad days than Sting. Hogan had cuts of the PPV revenue, a more direct cut of the merchandise (and not doubt was smart enough to get a large chunk of the nWo stuff covered by his merch deal), had a chunk of his money paid "off the WCW books" by Turner Home Entertainment (and lord knows what other Turner / Time Warner entities), etc., etc., etc.

 

My recollection is that at some point in the late 90s / early 00s, Dave made an almost off hand comment in the WON that at the peak of WCW revenue stream, no wrestler in the business ever made as much money as Hogan did. He was a genius of keeping himself on top in WCW, playing every angle perfectly, setting up all his contract negotiations so it looked like the company was ready to move beyond him... but positioning himself as too valueable not to get another massive deal.

 

Look at the big WCW PPV main events when they were high on the hog, and how *few* of them that Sting really was in.

 

Side tangent now that it's coming back to me: I recall that Hogan's original contract had a limited number of TV dates and a limited number of house show dates, and that for TV especially he got a silly $$$ amount. Anyone here think Terry wasn't smart enough to work a great per-TV appearance deal into his contract when Nitro went through the roof, and that he's wasn't smart enough to be available for TV a heck of a lot more than he had been in 1994 and early 1995?

 

Sting made good money. Way up there. Hogan was on another planet.

 

John

 

Cumulatively, Hogan had to have made the most all time, but I think (and someone jump in if they know exactly), Dave quoted Hogan's best year around the 6-8m mark and Austin's at 12m, making him the short term kingpin.

 

-Paul Jacobi-

[EricR]

I believe Hogan's merchandising deal when he first went to WCW was also so that WCW was almost losing money off Hogan merchandise. Hogan was pulling something like 50% on merchandise, and when you consider what the venues took as their cut, and what WCW had to pay their manufacturers...that's insane.

[jdw]

Yikes... Bruce is really digging in.

 

John

[Bix]

Yikes... Bruce is really digging in.

 

John

?

[jdw]

Flawed story:

 

* lacking the Context of the reasons of all of Ric's fuck ups

* lacking Balance on Ric being the GOAT beloved by Millions

 

Ric's not really broke (or at least at times Bruce seems to be saying that).

 

Ric's life has issues, but not really a trainwreck.

 

And on and on. Someone else can drag it over, but it doesn't quote well (Torch board is set to only quote new comments in a post, removing all prior quotes). It's really nothing fresh in Bruce's defense of Ric: same arguments, same digging in, etc.

 

I made the comment that he had an easy first response handed to him when the story was dragged over:

 

"This is a devastating piece. Ric really needs to get his life in order."

 

And left it at that. Instead, it's instantly and continually on the defensive.

 

I like Bruce a lot. Flair is just his soft underbelly and he tends to turtle up when Ric is criticized.

 

John

[Mad Dog]

Again, what context do you need? He did those things, it's documented fact. What he's done in the ring doesn't have an impact on his crimes. He sounds just like those assholes that want to look the other way for college and pro athletes who commit crimes because they're good at a sport. I mean seriously, Flair's not doing anything important in life. He's not healing the sick, saving the lives of the dying or anything really important like that. He puts on tights, talks some shit and rolls around in a ring with other men. That's really not enough to look past the mile long rap sheet he's developed in his life.

[artDDP]

Personally, while I find this information sad, learning about the real personalities behind anything I enjoy is fascinating.

[jdw]

WrestlingClassics: Extensive article on Flair from Grantland

 

Someone makes a crack on the second page:

 

"I've seen people bend over backwards to defend something many times, but man is McAdam really setting the bar in this thread."

 

Refresh my memory on what McAdam's socko on Classics is. C.C. Milani?

 

John

[rovert]

You would be correct, John

[jdw]

From Classics, a poster tossed out:

 

"Flair was partying at the Kid Rock concert in Charlotte over the weekend. All night long...buying drinks for people all over the place."

 

Was this reported anywhere?

 

John

[jdw]

Dave's piece on the Grantland piece is hit and miss.

 

The positive is that he's harder on Ric than one would expect. He pretty much admits that the massive numbers of issues can't be palmed off. He also admitts what some of us have said: these are just the issues that have ended up in what is largely one court (an exception being the Hell Flight being in AZ court).

 

The negatives might come across as nitpicky:

 

* still defends Ric to a degree

 

* standard Meltzer writing that could use an editor: bounces around and also loses the thread in some sentences/paragraphs

 

* The Big Goldie story is a bit off: it's not the belt Ric has used as collateral, Ric *did* return it to WCW, and it's likely (I'd have to double check) that Ric did get his deposit back as part of the case.

 

* not much by way of new reporting

 

The middle two are probably the nitpicky things. We're use to Dave's writing after 20 years, so you just roll with it. The Big Goldie is perhaps a little less of a nitpicky because it's an area where Dave is trying to add "context", detail or even correction to the Grantland piece. He doesn't pull it off very well.

 

The first one is a little balanced out by the overall tone of the piece. Whether intentional or not, it feels like Dave has reached the point where he finds this aspect of Ric's life to be sad, pathetic, hard to defend, and wishes that it wasn't this bad. He can't quite bring himself to say it that explicitly or hammer Ric like he would Hogan, who does get a cameo run in as being a broke wrestler. But it's there in what he writes, and he can't bring himself to make a full throated defense.

 

The fourth is... I don't know what to make of it. Dave largely walks through the incidents/issues reported in the Grantland piece, which Dave himself has admitted were a lot of things not known and/or reported in the past. Someone who wasn't a "wrestling reporter" came onto Dave's ground writing about Dave's favorite wrestler of all-time and not only summed up Ric's laundry list of issues better than Dave ever had, but hit items that hadn't been in the sheets before. That seems not to have inspired any "wrestling reporter" or wrestling writer to dig deeper and report on anything beyond (i) what is in the Grantland piece, or (ii) what they've already hit. An example of this would be Ric's recent TNA issues. Dave rolls out issues he's written about before rather than coming up with anything fresh. We all know how when wrestlers drop dead and Dave does a obit that there are little items that pop up in them that Dave had kept close to hand for years. This piece doesn't have any of that.

 

There's a sense that Dave has to talk about what's been made public in Grantland, pulls a few additional items that he's been forced to report in the WON, but that's it.

 

John

[Matt D]

So I've been experiencing the Flair shoot.

 

I just hit the point where he's in tears and saying that someone would have to cut his hand off to get the watch. It was rough all around.

 

And shortly before that he goes on about how he could use his time at the insane asylum in WCW (which he loved a lot), to get past a jury if he learned navy seals skills and killed all the people who screwed him out of money in business deals over the last few years. Then he said if he had 30 days to live from cancer he'd kill them all. It's joking but the tone is quite a bit different from everything else he says in the entire interview so it's striking.

[jdw]

Keith's piece on Dave's explaination of Ric's excuse on the alcoholic cardiomyopathy:

 

Ric Flair insists his alcoholic cardiomyopathy was a misdiagnosis

 

John

[jdw]

The other part of Dave's piece on Flair after what was in the other thread:

 

Flair suffered a broken bursa sac in his left arm taking a superplex from Sting, which wasn’t serious, but when Flair landed, he thought he had broken his arm. “It was brutal,” he told Mike Mooneyham. “I thought I had broken my arm on that spot. I don’t know how I did it either.” He said Sting put him down safely on the spot (it seemed to me he landed a little too much on his left side and with a torn rotator cuff that he was supposed to have surgery on that he didn’t, that could have been at risk). Flair took all the blame, saying, “I must have put my arm down wrong or something. I really don’t know how it happened. I’ve got one arm twice the size of the other right now.” You could see immediately he was hurt. They went quickly to the finish, and because of the injury, Flair couldn’t even do his face first fall, and that really looked bad. “When he hit me with the splash and went for the scorpion, couldn’t even take a face bump. I couldn’t put my arm down to take it. I couldn’t hit him either. It was brutal.” Flair wasn’t acting injured the next few days, and was out drinking with the guys after the shows every night (he was there for all three nights of tapings even though he only appeared the first night in front of the people) and not talking like he had any kind of a serious injury. He went to the doctor the day after coming back home and the doctor told him just to watch out for a possible infection.

There's too much in there that's sad, pathetic and sad-funny to count.

 

John

[Victator]

I remember watching Flair in 2005 try to do his Luger match with Chris Masters. He nearly landed on his neck after each press slam and back drop. So I've been expecting him to get hurt like this. Sorry to see it happen.

[jdw]

From PWI via PWT Boards... this appears to be all over the next, but Bix and Keith haven't shared it with us here.

 

Ric Flair is at it again. Months after offering a 5-minute phone conversation for $750 and a personalized video message for $1000, The Nature Boy is now offering his up close and personal services.

 

For $100,000, Flair will: "Accompany any young lady for a night of laughter, socializing, and dancing at the most special occasion of her young life: her high school prom." However, it's noted that, "There will be no interaction outside of the building in which the prom is being held. Prom ticket, limousine transportation, and Mr. Flair's round-trip plane ticket are to be paid for by the parties involved. Mr. Flair will only be providing himself and will bring his own suit. Suitors must also pick Mr. Flair up from the airport and drive him back immediately following the prom."

 

Flair's website also notes that, "Older women wanting Mr. Flair's services for a high school or college reunion will be allowed to have Mr. Flair's services for $100,000, in addition to the plane ticket and limousine transportation. Suitors must also pick Mr. Flair up from the airport and drive him back immediately following the event."

I actually don't see it on his website. Not saying it's not there, but perhaps it's buried. I did find the $25K Flair Robe.

 

John

[Boondocks Kernoodle]

OK now that's just creepy

[Bix]

When I google the pull quotes I only find references to the PWI post. Maybe an email press release went out?

[El-P]

OK now that's just creepy

Yep...

[Slasher]

Won't these ladies be disappointed that they aren't riding Space Mountain? Flair has to give the fans his trademark spots!

[jdw]

Maybe we should change this (red-lines to show changes):

 

"Prom ticket, limousine transportation, Mr. Flair's round-trip plane ticket and Viagra are to be paid for by the parties involved."

 

John

[El-P]

Won't these ladies be disappointed that they aren't riding Space Mountain? Flair has to give the fans his trademark spots!

That made me laugh.

[Cross Face Chicken Wing]

It's unfortunate if this is true. I'm sure Loss or Bix had a post like this in mind for their parody site. It's like Ric Flair is stealing their material by just being Ric Flair.

[Loss]

I actually do have an idea for a story which is close enough to home to be funny, but which would be impossible to actually happen. But yes, Ric Flair is a joke that writes himself these days. We'll see.