10 Ric Flair Stories So Crazy That They Must Be True

10. Training Was Like A Rocky IV Montage

In the harsh Winter months of 1971, the man who would become Ric Flair was learning how to wrestle, or at least getting the crap beaten out of him as he wondered exactly why he was putting his body through this nightmare.

Verne Gagne, the promoter of the AWA and an acclaimed wrestler in his own right, was the man putting a young Richard Fliehr through his initial paces, along with other trainers, like noted shooter Billy Robinson.

Eventually, Fliehr would give way to Flair, and an icon would grow, but during his first forays into the business, the master of the Figure Four Leglock actually quit three or four times, with Gagne himself dragging him back into the ring, telling Flair that he had quit everything else in his life, but he wouldn't quit this.

In years since, Flair has described his wrestling training as being like a training montage from one of the Rocky movies, specifically Rocky IV, because of the freezing cold barn conditions in which he was working. Younger wrestling fans are often fascinated with what it took to break into wrestling years ago, and it seems it wasn't quite what WWE Tough Enough would lead folks to believe.