Ric Flair Says He Had A Heart Attack During His Final Match In 2022
A couple years ago, at the ripe age of 73, Ric Flair announced that he would be getting in the ring one final time to wrestle his "Last Match" - because he didn't get enough closure with the way his wrestling career ended.
Almost everyone pointed out how this seemed like a horrible idea at the time, for a MULTITUDE of reasons, but we were told over and over again that Flair was in great shape, and cleared to do this by all of his doctors.
According to him - he was in the best shape since he was 20! Twenty!
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When it came time for the match, though - which they even made a tag team bout so Flair could avoid doing most of the work - he looked alarmingly bad. Like, on-the-verge-of-death bad. I was worried for the guy any time he got active, and I HATED the fake heart attack spot they worked into the match because it truly could've been legitimate.
Apparently, though, it might've been a real heart attack after all - as Flair has revealed he believes (at least) one happened in the midst of that match!
JAXXON Podcast- “I trained (for my last match), I got in the best shape, ever since I was 20 years old, and then I had a heart attack during the match. I had a heart attack during the match.
A lot of people didn’t (know). I didn’t know myself until about six months ago because I went and got a… — I go to the heart doctor like every six months because I’ve got the pacemaker, right? And they put that on me when I was real sick, not because I had a problem with my heart, but because they couldn’t get over the fact that my heart rate was so low, but it was from all of those hour-long matches and all that cardio.
I used to do 500 free squats every day. 500 free squats, 500 push-ups every day. — Or I would do the deck of cards or I would do step-ups on a chair. So my heart rate was always like 48. It drove people nuts that it was so slow.
So they put that on me and then I went to get what’s called a calcium scan which I’d never had before, because a couple of guys died in our business of heart issues so it kind of scared me, so I went and I blew a number on that and —they give you the nuclear stress test, shoot you with the dye, put you on the treadmill, everything, right? So it’s two days of three hours of testing and this is six months ago. The guy takes me in and if you look at your heart like a round pie, there’s a piece of my heart right here, this big, it’s black, it’s gone.
The guy said, ‘You’ve had a heart attack in the last two years.’ I said, ‘I never hurt.’ He said, ‘Have you passed out in the last two years?’ And during my last match, I passed out three times, and I thought it was because I was dehydrated.”
What a fucking lunatic Ric Flair is. Guy PASSED OUT on three separate occasions during his last match and never thought he should go get that checked out. He figured he was just dehydrated.
Meanwhile, as Trevor Dame on Twitter put it, he was on his way to making 'The Wrestler' the first movie based on a true story that hadn't happened yet! Something tells me he WASN'T in the best shape of his life since he was 20 in that moment!
I also seem to recall Flair taking a victory lap on all of the doubters after this match, who said he shouldn't do it; I wonder how he feels about that now?! Does he think this adds to his legacy in a cool way? I mean - did he even have the self awareness to realize how bad the match was in the immediate aftermath? He couldn't even slap on a decent Figure 4 leglock for the finish, and he was literally dying on the mat after the bell rang upon victory!
It was the worst idea I'd ever heard at the time, and this just proves why we were all right in doubting it should happen.
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P.S. One of the most insulting parts of the whole ordeal is that the WWE gave Ric Flair arguably the greatest retirement match/moment in wrestling history when Shawn Michaels hit him with "I'm sorry, I love you" at the end of their WrestleMania classic….
….but Flair returned to TNA moments later, ruining that "closure" he was given in the first place, and causing his hunger for this match!
P.P.S. Take absolutely everything Ric Flair says with a grain of salt - including this "legitimate" heart attack story. I don't even know if Flair knows when he's telling the truth anymore.