I guffaw when I troll wrestling message boards and some paralegal, comic book store owner, or parents’ basement inhabitant frets about Ric Flair and Hulk Hogan ruining their “dignity” by touring Australia at their advanced ages, how it’s costing them a lifetime of “credibility.”
Dignity? Flair’s been having his trunks pulled down for decades, and no dignity was involved back when, either. Credibility? Hogan was never really champion of anything, let alone the world. This is fake wrestling.
When Lou Thesz got old, he wrestled for tiny Tennessee indies. Buddy Rogers hit up supermarkets for money by doing the “slip and fall” con. Not real dignified, not real credible, but that’s not how we remember them.
Flair and Hogan have had their lives and fortunes ripped asunder by failed marriages. There’s nothing dignified about poverty so, at ages 60 and 56 respectively, they went to Australia, worked an old school angle, sold some tickets, did some matches, got paid, and went home.
What’s wrong with that? I saw the first match. Flair was actually pretty good. Attendance wasn’t great, but that’s the promoter’s problem. Flair and Hogan did their best, and it was half-decent for two old guys.
If baseball Hall-of-Famer Mike Schmidt, 60, played in the minors and hit .250, fans of the sport would love it. Well, that’s what Flair and Hogan did.
