Update On Why WWE Had Issues With Ric Flair’s Hall Of Fame Speech

Ric Flair decided to do his own thing during the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony this year, which the company didn’t like that much.

At this year’s Hall of Fame ceremony in Los Angles, Ric Flair did the induction speech for legendary Japanese wrestler The Great Muta.

Following the festivities, there was a report credited to Fightful Select noting that while WWE loved Konnan’s speech to induct Rey Mysterio, there was more of an opposite feeling for Ric Flair. While speaking about his podcast, Flair made it clear that WWE didn’t tell him that anything was wrong.

In this week’s Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer revealed that the reason WWE had an issue with Flair’s speech is that Ric didn’t follow along with the speech.

“For the Hall of Fame, there was a teleprompter where the planned speeches were written and pretty much everyone except Ric Flair read them so what was said was planned out and approved. Flair called Great Muta the best Japanese wrestler ever (he said the same when he inducted Tatsumi Fujinami) and talked about showing him around Atlanta when he first came to WCW.”

“The thing is that Flair didn’t read the teleprompter at all and just gave a speech having nothing to do with the script until the very end when he got back on script. The stuff listing Riki Choshu and Tenryu and Fujinami was actually the stuff that was in his script.”

On his podcast, Ric also spoke about how he thought his daughter Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley should have main evented Night One of WrestleMania 39, not the tag team match.