If someone talks about professional wrestling, Ric Flair would be one of the few names that would come in the lips of that person. Indeed, Ric Flair is one of the biggest stars of professional wrestling.
WWE addresses him as a 16 times world champion but he is actually a 19 times world champion in the mainstream wrestling companies. He won the NWA World Heavyweight Championship 10 times, WCW World Heavyweight Championship seven times, and WWE World Heavyweight Championship two times.
Ric Flair Reveals He Avoided Drugs For His Entire Life
Ric Flair is also one of the few professional wrestlers who avoided drugs for his entire life. This may sound a little strange to some fans that a wrestler of his caliber stayed away from such things. The Nature Boy revealed it how he did when he appeared as a guest on Sean Waltman’s new podcast, Pro-Wrestling 4 Life. He said,
The one thing you know about me, I don’t take anything. My only good thing I’ve ever done is stayed away from drugs. Even marijuana. I did one [smoked a joint] in college. I’m not saying I haven’t tried. In college, I tried it. One, and it gave me so much anxiety. Never again. Some people like that feeling of being loose and kind of out of control, I’ve never liked that. I mean, I’ve had Jack Brisco hold me down at a party, wrestle me to the ground and try to get me to do something. I said to Jack, ‘I’m not doing it.
My dad put the fear of God in me about doing drugs and stuff like that. What happened was – I’m not going to mention names – when I first started in Minneapolis with all the guys there, and you can go back and look at the territory. Everybody from Nick Bockwinkel to Ray Stevens to Dusty [Rhodes] to [Dick] Murdoch, Billy Graham.
Everybody. When they found out my dad was a doctor — I missed a training camp. I had five guys asking me to get scripts from my dad. Of course, I went to my dad. He went, ‘yeah, I don’t mind doing one, but then the second time around he said, ‘what are these guys doing? That was supposed to last. I can’t do that anymore.’
He thought, ‘okay, I’ll do this for my son. It’s going to help him be — but my dad was very ethical, man. When the second time around [shakes head], absolutely not. But I didn’t get it either, you know what I mean? It’s the same thing, ‘if you can take one Bennie [Benzedrine] and get a little bit of a buzz, well, take two, you’ll get double the buzz, or take three.’ It’s like Ephedrine. That’s why they can’t sell the stuff anymore.
Ric Flair is not the only big name in professional wrestling who did not do drugs. One of the biggest names never to consume drugs was Bruno Sammartino. The Italian-born professional wrestler not only stayed away from drugs but campaigned against such things as well. We hope one day will come when the world will be completely free of such deadly things.
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)