10 Best Ever Reasons For Wrestling Storyline Exits
5. WWE Asks Us A Troubling Question
"So you want Ric Flair to retire?"
A masterclass in pathos, and a true emotional highlight of WWE's underrated late-2000s storytelling craft - the midcard was rudderless, but the main event material soared in its long-term intricacies - WWE answered the message board protests and, in turn, inspired several moral crises.
Fans were tired of Ric Flair in 2007; he was effective in various iterations of the Evolution fallout, and bizarrely effective in his 2006 quasi-Terry Funk ECW role, but consensus had it that Flair was done. To some, it bordered on the depressing to see Flair in the ring; he could barely go at all, much less for 60 minutes. He was years and years removed from his sex symbol status. The man who was once so incredible, genuinely, that it was said he could carry a broom.
In 2007, he was closer to being the broom than the ultra-charismatic clinic-crafter.
Recognising this, Vince McMahon wrote him out of storylines by crafting what was among the most powerful in a WWE canon as ludicrously rich as the jet-flyin' Flair character. It was a fitting, big-time end to Flair's mainstream career, genius in its heft. At WrestleMania XXIV, Shawn Michaels retired him in an all-time great story match that exploited Flair's fading body to enhance the unbearable psychology.
In asking the audience a question it didn't know it wasn't ready for, WWE and Flair created something timeless to prove that he always was, slow pace and sagging physique be damned.