Ric Flair / YMMV - TV Tropes

Awesome Ego: Ric Flair the character (and arguably the performer) has a gigantic ego, but given that he's considered one of the best professional wrestlers ever, he was able to back back it up, which made him more charming.
Badass Decay:
- Flair ruled the NWA, but never quite reached the same level of prominence in other companies. It seemed like whoever held the book at the time was a competitor (Rhodes, Nash) or wanted to get away from the image of rednecks in dad boots kicking the tar out of each other (Bischoff, Russo). Flair was a holdover from that period.
  Triple H: They basically used him as a tackling dummy.
- WCW pretty much only ran shows in Flair country. They could have used that to launch the Horsemen as the thing standing against the nWo, and simultaneously launched Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko (or whoever else they wanted) into the stratosphere. Anytime you hear the hoofs come over the speaker, you'd know that someone was going to get their ass kicked. But no, that would have meant the nWo losing some of their stature. Instead they embarrassed the Horsemen at every turn. (The "OTHER CHANNEL JACKASS" sign is so fitting of WCW in the late nineties.)
- Whether or not Flair deserves blame for TNA's decline is debatable, but he did take a lot of heat for showing up to compete after WWE pulled out all the stops and gave him a sendoff for the ages after his WrestleMania retirement match.
- His "last match" in 2022 was painful to watch for even the biggest Flair marks, proving that not even the greatest professional wrestler of all time was immune to the perils of old age. To top it off, it won 2022 Gooker Award by a landslide, taking 48% of a vote that had nine other entries.
Crazy Is Cool: Ric Flair's so continually buzzed that if ever stops being on space mountain he is going to keel over from the cumulative hangover. Alternatively he already has and we have been dealing with Zombie Flair the last decade.
- One of the reasons Flair is still a great asset in his sixties is his willingness to do pretty much anything to sell an angle, including blading himself like crazy to get over his opponent's supposed toughness. Recently. Flair did a promo in TNA where he was talking about a recent cut he was given by Hulk Hogan. Flair then proceeded to punch at the wound until it reopened and blood poured down his face while he talked. Seriously, the man is insane.
- He bettered that with Mick Foley on the 9/30/10 episode of Impact, when he and Foley both did it, and at the same time.
- The 6/17/10 episode of TNA Impact, where he was caught up in an awesome-off with Jay Lethal doing a damn good Ric Flair impersonation. Complete with what turned into a "Wooo!"-off, and both Ric and Jay Lethal slinging around Flair's catch phrases. He almost got out-Flair'd by a Ric Flair impersonation. It was amazing to watch.
- For Command And Conquer: Red Alert 3: Uprising, Flair was cast as one of the generals. To promote the game he was in a feud where he was attacked by someone dressed as a Russian bear. With a Russian hat. And glowing red eyes.
- His WOOO!-fest with Kurt Angle.
Draco in Leather Pants:
- Later in his career, all his dirty cheating and condescending ways had given way to nostalgia. (Notably, he got cheered in the ECW arena even after calling the promotion a "glorified stunt show".) As Raven, a notorious partier himself, put it, "There's a reason why Ric Flair keeps getting turned face - who wouldn't want to party with the Nature Boy?"
- Ric Flair as a heel is a hard sell to the generation of fans who know him someone unreservedly cheered on sight. When you get a roof-level pop for a mule kick low blow...you've made it. You're getting cheered regardless. Another thing to consider is this generation is better at being able to tell a story in the ring and truly engage the audience. 30 years ago these guys had years on regional TV before they ever made it to the big leagues. Wrestlers today don't have that luxury as such.
- When Flair was fired in 1991, the fans were ready to full-on revolt, and indeed hijacked Great American Bash '91 which occurred almost immediately after (see kids, this isn't a new concept). Bear in mind Flair was the most hated heel in the company at the time, and they were that angry that he was gone.
Evil Is Cool: Bookers have noted that the reason why Flair kept turning face was because despite acting like a jackass as a heel, he was still so charming and charismatic that the fans couldnt help but want to... well, party with the Nature Boy!
Fanon Discontinuity: As far as most wrestling fans are concerned, Ric Flair's final match was his match at WrestleMania XXIV against Shawn Michaels. His run in TNA, and especially his "last match" in 2022, don't count.
He Panned It, Now He Sucks!
- Bashing ROH and TNA in favor of NXT was annoying but to be expected, it being part of the company currently paying him and the show his daughter being was featured on. What pissed people off was that he said NXT was better because it had more wrestling and less talking. While that was sometimes true of post Bischoff, last days on Spike TV TNA, who alternated between great shows full of wrestling and empty shows with little action, the most consistent complaint about SBG ROH, more than being New Japan's bitch, television being behind pay per view or classic material not being available, was that there was too much wrestling without context or emotional stakes. "No story lines" as WWE "loyalists" liked to claim. So there was hardly anyone who believed there was any sincerity in the claim lack of wrestling was ROH's problem(and until 2016-18, post reality competition NXT could be described as "If ROH had a budget three years ago.")
- After already backsliding into The Scrappy due to his overly-prominent role as Charlotte's manager in the early stages of her 2016 top heel run, Flair's reputation with wrestling fans took a further hit when he fired shots on the instant rise of Finn Bálor from NXT draftee to Raw Universal Championship #1 Contender by stating that Bálor is not a superstar, no cruiserweight will be world champion or main event WrestleMania (especially given it's happened multiple times including the friend who later retired him), and Roman Reigns should've beaten Bálor for the top contendership based on looks alone.
Heartwarming Moments: Naitch's reaction to his daughter Charlotte winning the NXT Women's championship.
Ho Yay: Celebrity Wife Swap S.2.5, featuring the Flairs (though technically they're unmarried) and the Pipers. As pointed out by YouTube commenters, Hot Rod seems to understand Ric better than the women in his life do.
Memetic Badass: Flair Through the Ages
- Who would have guessed he was the secret leader of nWo Wolfpac?!◊
Memetic Mutation:
- Flair's "WOOOOO!", thanks to the ECW Mutants, became associated with knife-edge chops, and the tradition of shouting "WOOOO!" every time one is performed has carried on to the present day.
- LEAVE THE MEMORIES ALONE, thanks to the overplayed (albeit awesome) tribute video package done for his retirement ceremony.
- Elbow-dropping [x]
- Go to bed!
- According to my Rowlex...
- The David Flair Titantron.
- His Facebook page has become infamous for its constant posting of click bait links, which has lead to many memes related to it. The most popular one has him calling himself "The dirtiest click baiter in the game!"
- Ric Flair's infamous tendency to blade in nearly every big match he was ever in gets a lot of memes. Popular memes include shots of Ric Flair's bloodied face, with the meme asserting that the blade job was done after some mundane activity.
Mis-blamed: Many TNA fans associate him—rightly or wrongly—with that company's decline, as he arrived at about the same time as Hogan, Bischoff, and the other washed-up WCW guys. When they made AJ Styles—the guy who was there since day one, who held all the titles, who was their best wrestler—into a Ric Flair protegee, it was Strike 1. (Of course there were many more things.)
Obscure Popularity: As legendary as Flair is to wrestling fans, he is not very well-known among mainstream audiences, especially compared to fellow wrestling icons such as Hulk Hogan, "Stone Cold" Steve Austin and Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson. A lot of this is due to the fact that Flair has mostly shied away from Hollywood unlike the other three, and spent most of his prime wrestling for NWA/WCW instead of WWF/E. Flair even seems to be aware of this himself, as he admitted on the Hulk Hogan Anthology DVD that he's not as famous as Hogan.
Once Original, Now Common: For most under the age of 40, Flair is the ancient, balding goof who could barely wrestle and would chest-chop and eye-poke his opponents before finally slapping on the figure-four leglock at the end. To get a sense of why he's considered one of the best professional wrestlers ever, you definitely have to watch the first few Starrcade events and Clash of the Champions. ^note It doesn’t help that many of Flair’s greatest matches were never put on tape or film and are thus lost to history. ^note People not old enough to have seen him wrestle live in his prime only have the big matches that were recorded and the recollections of older fans to go off of.
The Scrappy: Sadly, reached this status with fans in 2016 by constantly interfering in Charlotte's matches leading to an overly long combined reign as the final Divas Champion/inaugural Women's Champion^note with repetitive finishes and one incident during Royal Rumble 2016 where, as a diversion during Charlotte's match with Becky Lynch, he forcefully gave Lynch a full kiss on the mouth, leading WWE to edit it out after receiving complaints that it amounted to sexual assault, and another one in which he told Natalya to kill herself on a SmackDown taping, apparently forgetting that WWE is a PG show. It got even worse after being dropped off TV as Charlotte's manager, as following Ensemble Dark Horse Finn Bálor's instant push to the main event of SummerSlam, Flair stated that Bálor is not a main event talent and that a cruiserweight will never be a world champion or main event WrestleMania. This statement drew further ire from many hardcore fans, who noted that it ran counter to recorded history (including one person who's Flair's friend). Not to mention that three years later, Becky Lynch and Charlotte would main-event WrestleMania 35 along with Ronda Rousey.

YMMV / Ric Flair

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