Vince McMahon Was Considered To End Ric Flair’s Career
Ric Flair’s retirement storyline is fondly remembered by WWE fans but it appears it could have been Vince McMahon that ended Flair’s career.
At the tail end of 2007, Ric Flair cut a rousing promo where he promised fans he would never retire despite his advancing years. Then-WWE Chairman Vince McMahon gave The Nature Boy the chance to continue competing but to do so Flair would have to keep winning as his next loss would be his last match.
Flair survived several ‘career threatening’ matches against the likes of Randy Orton, Triple H, and William Regal but at WrestleMania 24 it all came crashing to an end as Shawn Michaels told Flair “I’m sorry, I love you” before finishing him off with Sweet Chin Music.
Speaking on his Something To Wrestle With podcast – courtesy of AdFreeShows – WWE executive Bruce Prichard reflected on the storyline to end Flair’s career and revealed that Vince McMahon himself was considered to do it:
“I know that, by this time, for Ric to come back — it was presented as, ‘Hey, we’re going to do Ric’s retirement.’ The idea was … that every match Ric was in could potentially be his last.”
“There was thought that it would be Mr. McMahon. There was thought it could’ve been a lot of different people. It could’ve been Hunter, it could’ve been Shawn, it could’ve been Vince. It probably could’ve ended up being any number of people. I think ending up on Shawn being that guy, [who] was the young version of Ric Flair in so many ways, really worked.”