When the news broke that Ric Flair, renown for his alcoholism, womanising and public displays of nudity, had pissed off his wife so much that she had assaulted him I knew that the wrestling media would cover for his indiscretions with little, if any, criticism for his behaviour. It’s long past the time they needed to tell him to grow up. Why would they start now?
And guess what, the wrestling media may have surpassed themselves this time!
Bryan Alvarez set the tone on the February 23rd Observer Radio show lamenting about poor Ric and how one thing after another just seems to happen to this poor guy. Well Bryan, there’s a saying that in life that you make your own luck. For some reason most sex addicted, philandering, drunken old con artists end up having marital problems. Just ask Tiger Woods and he wasn’t even a drunken old con artist!
Dave Meltzer wasn’t much better. He strangely suffered selective amnesia between the aforementioned radio show and writing the March 1st Wrestling Observer Newsletter. Unlike the radio show, the newsletter story on Flair conveniently forgot to mention that he had been drinking. He also claimed that “exactly what the two were arguing about was unclear”, despite giving a fairly detailed account about the cause of the argument on the radio show. But we wouldn’t want poor Ric to lose his non-wrestling endorsements or contradict Ric Flair’s agent’s ridiculous claim that the disagreement was “unfortunate” and that Ric had done “nothing wrong”, would we now?
I haven’t been following the Torch’s coverage as closely, but their message boards wouldn’t be the same without Mark Madden running in to childishly catcall anyone who has the audacity to criticize his buddy, while Wade Keller and Bruce Mitchell fail to bat an eyelid.
However, this is just par for the course. The wrestling media offered no criticism of Flair’s actions when he committed petty fraud against independent wrestling promoters. No mention of the fact that Ric Flair was a terrible role model for his son Reid by going out with him, getting drunk, chasing ladies and ending up in fights. Getting into pathetic backstage fights is AOK too. To put it bluntly the wrestling media needs to grow up and stop covering for one of their favourites, at least then they can’t be blamed for Ric’s failure to do so.