50 Greatest WWE Raw Moments Ever
33. Ric Flair 'Retires' (March 31st, 2008)
Curated by Triple H on the Raw immediately following his emotional WrestleMania defeat to Shawn Michaels, the parade of legendary on-screen friends and foes that trip over themselves in tribute to Ric Flair is an unbelievable sight to behold and testament to precisely where he sat in the grand wrestling pantheon back in 2008.
In the shadow of a genuinely moving outing with 'The Heartbreak Kid' 24 hours earlier, the mood and tone is spot on, as long as you've got the stomach for an awful lot of his tears. The scene is a perfectly placed and produced stroll down memory lane for 'The Kiss-Stealing, Wheeling-Dealing Son-Of-A-Gun' on a weekend that was indebted to his legacy to help draw the houses one last time.
It'd rank higher if the whole thing didn't scan as one big wrestling work within a few years of it taking place. Flair loves sentiment in theory, but so rarely can he put any of it into practice. Donning the tights once again on tour with Hulk Hogan, then in TNA and nearly disastrously in his 2022 "Last Match" alongside Andrade El Idolo against Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett (once again hooked by the prospect of being that World Champion-level draw one last time), Flair will never be able to say a true goodbye to pro wrestling, even if WWE's gloss and sheen gave him a near-perfect opportunity.