Name: Ric Flair on Surviving Horrific Plane Crash
Uploaded: 2023-04-22T17:42:01.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ric Flair on Surviving Horrific Plane Crash' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-22. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Ric Flair on Surviving Horrific Plane Crash' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2023-04-22. Transcript available.

The Joe Rogan Experience
I lived the life, I have to admit, it wasn't always cost-effective, but I lived
my gimmick.
Yeah, but it's such a fun life, man.
What year did you start? What year did you make your first pro wrestling
matches?
'73.
'73.
I started training in the fall of '72, and I had my first match in January of '73.
'73.
Those are the old days, man, the Killer Kowalski days.
Vern Gania.
Wow.
And what's crazy.
Crusher, Bruiser.
Yeah.
But you started wrestling after the plane crash, right?
No, the plane crash was in '75.
Oh, wow.
I wrestled three years.
Tell us about the plane crash.
We were going from Charlotte to Wilmington, North Carolina for outdoor show, 10,000
at Legion Stadium.
That's where Michael's from.
That's the first time I met Michael Jordan.
Not at that show, but I met him at the matches in Wilmington.
And what happened ultimately is he took five of us on the plane, and we didn't
know at the time he was carrying no fuel because we were 1,400 pounds over
gross.
Right.
So we get there and hit a little bit of a headwind.
We're between 7,000 and 8,000.
It's not a pressurized plane since that's not 310.
And he did what's called past the point of no return.
He should have landed in Raleigh and refilled.
But he's looking and saying it's 100 miles, right?
So unbeknownst to us, the guy in front of me, Johnny Valentine, who got
paralyzed, kept looking at the gas gauge and looking back at me and going, ah,
ah.
I was going, Johnny had that dry sense of humor.
Well, we're flying along, all of a sudden the right engine goes boop, boop, boop,
boop, boop, boop.
Maybe like six times over, like you see in the movies, and then bingo pinned,
right?
I went, shit.
He reaches down, he pulls up the reserve, natural reaction, there is no reserve
gas.
Left engine went, boom.
And instead of a, we flew into a tree orchard, right?
A little cartwheel of a small aircraft.
We were going so fast, we tore it down.
And landed a railroad bank and stuck at the ground at 230 miles an hour.
So we were probably going well over 300.
And we're just literally 200 yards from the runway.
Wow.
So he tried.
And you're, you...
He died.
He never regained consciousness.
And two chicks came, both engaged to him, double knockout at the door, the
hospital door.
Oh, boy.
I told the guy, he says, and he goes, Joe, you and I could talk all day.
So they're putting this in the ambulance, right?
It's like the old military style.
Not like the ones today that are like a hospital room, right?
You're putting it in a rack, right?
And he goes, I think we might lose this one.
So I go, I told the guy, I said, I think he's talking about me.
I said, man, go to my shaving kit.
I said, a letter to a chick named Sheila.
I said, tell Sheila I love her not to come see me.
Last I've seen a Sheila.
Oh, boy.
The guy showed up 10 years later at the match.
He says, you remember me?
I'm the guy who got the letter for you.
I said, thanks.
So how bad did you get injured in the accident?
Broke my back three places.
T-10, 11, and 12.
So fractured the actual bones of the spine?
Compression fracture.
Yeah.
I used to be a six foot two.
So they had to fuse your back?
Nope.
No surgery at all.
Really?
They just didn't think I'd ever wrestle again.
And that was what we were going to do, right?
They said you're never going to wrestle again.
Yeah.
That was in '75?
What did you say?
When was it the crash?
It was October of '75, and I was back in the ring in March of '76.
Yeah.
I went from 255 to 180, back to 218.
Wow.
But I never got myself to land flat on my back again, ever.
Everybody knows I landed on my hip, on my side.
Yeah.
Because of your back injury.
Yeah.
I just couldn't get myself to land flat.
So the promoter I was wrestling said if you don't take a backdrop, that's where
you flip
over a guy's shoulder and go up in the air like six, seven feet.
Boom.
I'm going to make you wrestle an hour every night until you do.
So after two weeks of wrestling, and you know, some of the crowds back then are
250,
300 people.
You know what I mean?
Five bucks ringside.
Fisherville, North Carolina, or Fisherville, Virginia, middle of nowhere, right?
One hour every night.
Mm-hmm.
Finally, I said, damn it, I'm just going to take the backdrop.
Throw me in.
Hit the turbo.
Took it.
Boom.
That was over.
But I just couldn't get myself to land flat on my back.
When you did, what happened?
Were you all right?
I was fine.
Yeah.
So it was just psychological?
I was psychological, yeah.
Jesus Christ.