On the latest edition of his WOOOOO Nation Uncensored podcast WWE Hall of Famer Ric Flair spoke about dropping the WWE championship to Bret Hart at a house show in 1992, explaining that an injury led to him not being able to perform for television. The Nature Boy also discusses the infamous WCW Invasion event in North Korea, where he faced off against the legendary Antonio Inoki. Highlights are below.
Recalls chipping his ear canal in a matchup with the Ultimate Warrior:
“What happened was the night before, The Ultimate Warrior dropped me on my head with a vertical suplex and I got that inner ear thing. When I went to the floor, I rolled up, went to get up and fell down. I went to get up again and I fell down. I thought I was having a stroke or something. What it was is I broke a little chip off in my ear canal. In a way, that’s like oil. The chip goes back and forth. It lasted for six months. I went to The Mayo Clinic, Duke, everywhere with my dad, plus my dad being a physician, and it just didn’t heal.”
Says the injury is why he dropped the world title to Bret Hart at a house show and not TV:
“I called Vince and he said, ‘Get to Calgary.’ The reason why the match was so bad was because I had no equilibrium. The match sucked. I’ve never had the chance to tell this story publicly, but I had no equilibrium. I went home for six months after that. Bret gave me a backdrop. I had to lay there for a minute. I couldn’t just get up. I had to collect myself. I had that for six months, and then one day I woke up, and it was gone. I banged my head against the wall five times because I was going to get a Lloyd’s of London check tax free for $750,000. I called my dad and said, ‘Dad, it’s gone. I’m not going to tell anybody as I’m going to get my check.’ He said, ‘That’s karma. Don’t do it’, and I didn’t get it. I went back to work.”
On working the North Korea show for WCW:
“I was promised all this stuff by WCW or whoever was the boss. You can fill in the blanks. It was never supposed to air anywhere. They made a PPV out of it, sold it, and I never got a dime. First of all, they promised me, not that they had to, that it would never be seen anywhere. They made a DVD out of it and I never got paid a dime. There were 190,000 people in the crowd. They were silent until Inoki came out, then they went crazy, not because the match was so good, but because he’s Korean. He was like in their eyes, a returning hero.”
On getting picked to face Inoki:
“They (New Japan/Inoki) wanted George Foreman first, Hogan second, me third. They (Foreman and Hogan) didn’t go. They were smart.”
(H/T and transcribed by WrestlingNews.Co)