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PART TWO

 

Chappell: In the book around the sections you talk about George Scott, you also mention the late Johnny Valentine. He was an early partner of yours. What a tough guy in the ring, and one that a lot of people who visit our website remember well.

 

Flair: Yeah, Johnny was a good guy. Johnny was a strange guy, to be honest. I can’t say that I didn’t learn a little bit from him, because I did. But his style was totally different from what I wanted to do.

 

Chappell: Totally mat based, that’s for sure!

 

Flair: Well, yeah, his style didn’t work with anything I really wanted to do.

 

I came into the business watching Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson, (Nick) Bockwinkle and Red Bastien…and all of a sudden I was down there watching John do his thing.

 

I really liked the Anderson’s style…

 

Chappell: Really?

 

Flair: Yeah, that worked a lot better for me than John’s did.

 

But, I was with John then, and it worked out good. Because of the fact that I was a young guy, and he was older and more experienced.

 

It’s kind of like what I’m doing now with Randy (Orton) and Dave (Batista), you know, in ‘Evolution.’

 

Chappell: That’s right…in a lot of ways you have come full-circle in your career now with the WWE.

 

Flair: A little similar, in some ways.

 

But, I just wasn’t that enamored with Johnny’s style of work.

 

I mean, I appreciated how hard he and Wahoo fought. And they did fight…it was a fight, not a wrestling match.

 

Chappell: Oh boy…those were brutal!

 

Flair: I appreciated all that, but I told myself that I needed to be a more colorful and more flamboyant guy that flew around a little more than Johnny did. He didn’t believe in ANY kind of bumps at all…he didn’t like going off his feet.

 

Chappell: With John, you pretty much got toe-to-toe slugfests…

 

Flair: Yeah, you really did.

 

Chappell: We all remember that Valentine was in the plane with you that went down in Wilmington in October of 1975. Of course, Valentine was never able to wrestle again after that.

 

There is a whole chapter in the book devoted to the plane crash. I know I was riveted to that chapter, to the point that I felt that I was in that plane with you! That had to be terrifying beyond anything imaginable?

 

Flair: Is was a really harrowing experience…thank you. It was a rough deal.

 

Chappell: Another wrestler you mention by name in your Acknowledgments section is the late Wahoo McDaniel. And, of course, you’ve already mentioned him several times this afternoon.

 

I guess what the book really impressed on me was how close you were to him…going far beyond what we fans saw and knew in the 70s…

 

Flair: Yes, that’s most definitely the truth.

 

Chappell: Please share some of your thoughts about the ‘Chief’ with us. I think one of your best stories in the book, is where Wahoo comes racing into the hospital in Wilmington to check on you after the 1975 plane crash, and the hospital personnel tried to restrain him, because you two were in a heated feud then! They thought Wahoo had come to the hospital to finish you off! (laughs)

 

Flair: Yeah, exactly, that’s how seriously they took it back then.

 

Wahoo was that kind of a guy; just a stand up guy…take no sh*t from anybody type of guy. And he lived that way every minute of his life.

 

(laughs) He didn’t take sh*t from anybody…not the wrestlers, the wrestling promoters, women, wives, girlfriends…

 

Chappell: (laughing) It didn’t matter…no one was immune!

 

 

Flair and Wahoo prepare to do battle in Richmond in 1976.

Photo courtesy Bill Janosik | MORE PHOTOS

 

Flair: You know, Wahoo was married six times. If he didn’t like something his wife was saying…he didn’t let the door hit her on the ass on the way out!

 

Chappell: (laughing)

 

Flair: He didn’t care…when he got up in the morning he was gonna play golf or he was gonna fish. He would do whatever he was doing that afternoon, and then he’d leave and go to work and then he was gonna drink that night, and come home late. He didn’t care! (laughs)

 

But, I mean, he was one of the most competitive people I’ve ever known in my life…

 

Chappell: Interesting!

 

Flair: He had to be the best at everything he ever did. He was a scratch golfer, and if they did that kind of stuff back then, a world class Bass fisherman. He loved all that stuff, you know what I mean?

 

Chappell: Yeah, I remember on some of his Mid-Atlantic interviews his love of golf and fishing would definitely come out at times.

 

Flair: He slept on a real bear rug…and if you stayed in his apartment or his house it had to be 60 degrees---it was brutal!

 

Chappell: (laughing)

 

Flair: He was just a real Jeremiah Johnson.

 

Chappell: Wahoo McDaniel…the ‘Mountain Man!’ Amazing!

 

Flair: Yes…he really was.

 

Chappell: Another wrestler you mention in the book’s Acknowledgements, and a great competitor in the ring, was Ricky Steamboat.

 

Flair: Yes.

 

Chappell: I found it interesting in the book, to find out that you were actually the one that approached George Scott and pushed to start that program with Ricky in 1977. And we all know how phenomenal that turned out!

 

Flair: And you know, the older guys, including Wahoo, weren’t too excited about [Steamboat] coming along!

Chappell: I’ve always been curious about that. But, I can sort of see that being the case.

 

Flair: Yeah…it was.

Ricky Steamboat holds Flair high overhead during a 1978 battle in Kingsport, TN

(Photo courtesy Dick Bourne)

 

Chappell: In the book, I think you indicate that Steamboat was the best ‘good guy’ that you ever wrestled. And, of course, Steamboat stayed a good guy his entire career.

Flair: In my entire life, he was…he was fabulous.

 

Chappell: And Steamboat ended up being your first tag team partner when you turned into a good guy yourself in 1979. Talk about a ‘Dream Team’ pairing!

 

Flair: Oh yeah…he was off the charts.

 

Chappell: Another person you mention in your Acknowledgements was Mid-Atlantic announcer Bob Caudle. You said the ‘golden voices’ of Bob Caudle, along with Gordon Solie and current WWE announcer Jim Ross, ‘helped provide the soundtrack of my life.’

 

Flair: Yes…

 

Chappell: Your mention of Bob Caudle got me to thinking about all the great Mid-Atlantic television angles that took place at the WRAL studios in Raleigh, North Carolina, or wherever you all were taping TV.

 

Flair on the set of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling with Bob Caudle and girls in 1978

 

A couple of great ones are mentioned in the book…one is from 1978 when you suckered Steamboat in the ring and rubbed his face raw on the mat and floor. Then he comes back on another show, and tears your clothes off you!

 

You also mentioned the angle from early 1981 where Roddy Piper comes out and presents you the NWA TV Title as a sort of consolation prize, after he’s beaten you for the U.S. Title. You turn the interview around on him, exposing his winning the U.S. belt from you with a foreign object!

 

Flair: (laughs)

 

Chappell: Any other Mid-Atlantic television memories stand out to you?

 

Flair: We did a lot of great stuff at WRAL. The angle with Blackjack Mulligan was huge…where I took his Cowboy hat that Waylon Jennings had given him, and tore it up and stomped on it. And a little later on, I was wresting somebody and Mulligan comes out wearing my robe, and he tore up my robe in front of me…

 

Chappell: That was an unforgettable Mid-Atlantic moment, Ric!

 

Flair: And then I put a bounty out on Mulligan. I left for Japan, and when I came back, we were selling out everywhere! (laughing)

 

Chappell: And of course back then, everything played off the weekly TV show in your market. And that got the fans out to their local arena. So those TV angles like the Hat and Robe were really, really important then. There was hardly any cable TV and certainly no satellite dishes in those days. And Pay Per View events were years off.

 

Flair: Exactly. Oh yeah, they were big-time.

 

Chappell: You also mention in the book’s Acknowledgements section Arn Anderson, who you referred to as your ‘friend for life.’

 

Arn came in at the tail end of the Mid-Atlantic promotion, and has been closely associated with you through Crockett, WCW and now to the present with World Wrestling Entertainment.

 

Flair: Arn came in during 1985, and was with me there for a lot of the Crockett days.

 

Chappell: That was around the time that the ‘Four Horsemen’ came into being. That time period is also well chronicled in the book. It certainly sounds like things with the Horsemen were every bit as wild as what you all were always telling us about on TV!

 

Flair: (laughing) Yeah…they were! We really had a lot of fun.

 

Chappell: As the years go on, the book describes the disintegration of Jim Crockett Promotions in the late 1980s in a lot of detail. For most Mid-Atlantic fans, I think that portion of your book will be a fascinating, but a sad read.

 

You describe how your relationship with Jimmy Crockett, Jr. became more distant, and there were really two opposing camps…with Jimmy Crockett and Dusty (Rhodes) on one side, and you and David , Jackie and Frances Crockett on the other.

 

Flair: Yeah…

 

Chappell: I think a lot of the fans that visit our site will be very interested in hearing how all that really did go down.

 

Flair: Well, you know, it went down exactly the way that I wrote it!

 

I tell you, to this day, I don’t know how Jimmy and I drifted apart. He went from being my best friend, a guy that I thought the world of, to a guy that I just couldn’t talk to. He was out of control.

 

He was convinced that they could go to Dallas…which they lost a fortune. And make movies. You know, that story is very similar to the WCW story later in the book.

 

Chappell: How so?

 

Flair: Well, not similar as to the way Jimmy treated me, of course. Jimmy Crockett never treated me badly at all. But Jimmy and Dusty had an obsession with trying to compete with Vince McMahon, and it overshadowed the importance of making the territory do well.

 

They were so consumed with becoming a national commodity, that they forgot about their back yard. They spent money they didn’t have, continuously…which is very similar to the WCW story.

 

Chappell: And it sounded like by that time, Jimmy would only listen to Dusty?

 

Flair: No matter how many of us told Jimmy that they were spending too much money, it didn’t matter…

 

Chappell: He didn’t want to hear it.

 

Flair: Right. And we kept telling him he should stay east of the Mississippi…not go west of the Mississippi. If he had done that, he would have stayed in business.

 

But the minute we went west, we started losing big money. 

 

Chappell: And that situation is addressed in depth in the book.

 

Flair: (laughs) And you know who speaks out very candidly about it, is David (Crockett)! David verifies everything I’m saying.

 

Chappell: He does, and in fact David Crockett is quoted throughout the book. I thought his insight on a lot of subjects contributed significantly to the book.

 

Flair: Don ’t think that David didn’t seize the opportunity to tell Dusty and Jimmy what he thinks of them…

 

Chappell: Oh yes!

 

Flair: Until I read David ’s quotes, I didn’t realize how harsh he’d been either. He’s harder on them than I am! And I’m not really hard on them…

 

Chappell: No, not to any great extent certainly….

 

Flair: The things that I’m talking about there, probably hurt me more than the guys that are reading it now.

 

 


PART THREE


 

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