Ric Flair opens up about a myriad of topics during his chat with Renee Paquette.
Since departing WWE, Ric Flair has made appearances at Triplemania and the National Wrestling Alliance’s 73rd Anniversary Show. In his early 70s, Flair is trying to live his life to the fullest as he explained to Renee Paquette during their chat on the Oral Sessions podcast.
The topic of Flair potentially collaborating with All Elite Wrestling came up and he said he’d be up for a Four Horsemen reunion in AEW with Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Barry Windham and J.J. Dillon. Flair is willing to guarantee that it could pop a number for one of their TV shows.
We [The Four Horsemen] just had the best damn time. Four guys just doing their thing and four guys that were really good at what they were doing and J.J. Dillon, how much better does it get than J.J., right? So that’s why I’m saying that’s something I’d bet Tony [Khan] some money that we could pop a number. I would guarantee if we could advertise it, you know what I mean?
Elsewhere during the conversation, Flair shared that he received a text message from Randy Orton and Orton suggested that people would tune in to see The Four Horsemen reunite in AEW.
Get back in the ring and entertain? Absolutely. A [WWE] or B [AEW], yes. I would ask him [Vince McMahon] first because I owe that to him. I got a text from Randy Orton. I can’t read it to you, I don’t have it but, ‘Let me tell you something; if you’re at AEW and The Four Horsemen get together, everybody in the world will watch it.’ So you’ve got Arn [Anderson], Tully [Blanchard], Barry [Windham’s] sitting down about a mile from here and J.J. [Dillon], fly him in and you can [do] an half-hour interview with [Tony] Schiavone and Jim Ross.
Continuing on the topic of All Elite Wrestling, Flair said he has not been contacted by Tony Khan about working with the company. He added that although he and Tony are friends, talks concerning him coming in have not been had.
People’s lips started rumors and I’m not gonna get in — no need to do that. ‘Oh, he’s going to AEW. He and Tony Khan are friends.’ I mean yeah, we are friends but I haven’t heard a word from Tony. If you asked it, tell him I’m around.
Ric requested and received his release from WWE. He explained that it was just business and there are no hard feelings. He decided that he wanted to make a living not being on the payroll of a pro wrestling company.
What happened was is I had a bunch of pending opportunities. So, I had a bunch of things that I was doing currently at the time that I signed my contract, they allowed those. Wendy [Barlow] got to keep her shop. I mean these are big things. I mean they gave me — I got to keep Cameo. There were a couple of other things and then, you know, a couple deals kept coming along that I got to the point where I was asking them, I think I probably exhausted them, asking, not to grandfather them in but let me do ‘em and then of course the answer was, ‘You can do em maybe’ and I thought [about] what I was gonna say to you [Renee Paquette] today and how I could handle this. I just decided that I wanted to finally, which I did for three years, make a living not being under a wrestling payroll. That’s all it was. I’ve known Vince McMahon since 19 — first of all, I worked for his father in ‘76. I’ve known Vince since then, went to work [for] him, he saved me when I had a big to-go-around with WCW and a guy named Jim Herd, went up there in ‘91, stayed for a year-and-a-half. My first WrestleMania was Randy Savage, had the greatest run of my life. The worst mistake I’ve ever made was going back to WCW. There’s no animosity whatsoever. It was just business and I wanted to try something and they just had a different vision.
At the conclusion of he and Renee’s chat, Flair said he will be present in Illinois this weekend for All Out to support Andrade El Idolo. Andrade is scheduled to go one-on-one with PAC at the pay-per-view.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Oral Sessions with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
