10 Wrestlers Who Ruined Gimmick Matches For Everybody Else

7. Ric Flair - Retirement Match

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WWE.com

In terms of picture-book endings, they don't get better than Rick Flair going out in an emotional blaze of glory at WrestleMania XXIV back in 2008.

With a heartfelt “I love you” and a swift Sweet Chin Music, Shawn Michaels sent The Nature Boy into retirement – the gimmick here, of course, being that Flair would have to retire if he lost the match.

Wrestling fans are always cautious about in-ring retirements, with there been so many examples - *cough* Terry Funk *cough* - of wrestlers calling time on their careers, only to lace up their boots mere months later. But Space Mountain’s retirement seemed just too perfect to ever go back on.

Not only did Naitch have his special moment at the Showcase of the Immortals, he’d also get a fantastic send-off on the following night’s Raw as the collective wrestling world paid its respects to one of the greatest of all-time.

Sadly, Flair would make a mockery of this retirement stipulation when he returned to action for Hulk Hogan’s Let the Battle Begin tour of Australia in 2009. Not content with simply wrestling in Australia, though, The Nature Boy would then wrestle for a further two years in TNA.

It was already tough for wrestling fans to believe that retirement from the squared circle really did mean retirement, but Ric Flair going back on undoing such an all-time special moment sealed the deal and ruined the concept of any sort of retirement stipulation.

And that’s before we even begin to think about Shawn Michaels’ big return to grab some of the Saudi Arabia blood money at last year’s Crown Jewel…

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