It was supposed to be just another quick local flight. On October 4, 1975, a small Cessna 310 plane carrying promoter David Crockett and wrestlers Tim Mr. Wrestling Woods, Johnny Valentine, Bobby Bruggers and a young Ric Flair left Charlotte, North Carolina for Wilmington, North Carolina to make it to an evening show nearby. However, as they approached their destination, it became apparent that the plane had simply run out of gas. It transpired that the pilot, Joseph Farkas, hadnt properly distributed the weight of the passengers before taking off, and had had some problems getting off the ground. Rather than sort out the weight issues responsible for the lag, hed simply jettisoned fuel, confident in their ability to make the short hop to Wilmington. It appeared that confidence was misplaced. The plane cut across several trees and a telegraph pole before hitting the ground, hard. Seats buckled and were thrown loose, and the passengers were tossed around like dolls. Flair was in the front seat of the plane, having traded places with Johnny Valentine. Had he not done so, he might have suffered the same career ending injury as Valentine: both he and Bruggers had their backs broken and never wrestled again. Flairs back was also broken - in three places - and he would initially receive the same prognosis from doctors. He was told that his recovery time would be around a year, and that the severity of the injury meant that even after rehabilitation, he would never perform in the ring again. But doctors always underestimate the resilience of professional wrestlers bodies. They train every day. They take bumps every day, and the inside of a wrestling ring is canvas on mats on boards on wood on girders: not exactly fluffy pillows. Flair, in particular, was always proud of his conditioning. He was the sixty-minute man long before he wrestled sixty-minute Broadways. The crash changed some things for good. Flair became a better, more fully rounded wrestler, no longer able to rely on the power brawling style that was his trademark before the crash. Youll have noticed, too, his odd habit of landing on his hip and side after a slam or suplex: thats a bumping style he adopted after the crash to protect his back from being reinjured. Prior to the crash, Flair was being groomed to be a top star in the business, and he had ambitions of reaching the very top of the NWA. He knew, as every wrestler does, that taking time off means losing your spot, which means placing your dreams on the back burner until you return. Despite the doctors dire predictions, Ric Flair returned to wrestling full time in February 1976 to begin the feud with Wahoo McDaniel that hed been set to start before the crash. Three months later in his home town of Charlotte, Flair defeated McDaniel in a hair vs. title match, winning the NWA Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight title. Two years later, he was calling himself the Nature Boy and challenging the actual Nature Boy, Buddy Rogers, who would pass the gimmick on to him. The rest is history.
Professional writer, punk werewolf and nesting place for starfish. Obsessed with squid, spirals and story. I publish short weird fiction online at desincarne.com, and tweet nonsense under the name Jack The Bodiless. You can follow me all you like, just don't touch my stuff.
