When news broke that Charlotte Flair was not only going to miss extensive time with a combination ACL, MCL, and meniscus injury, but would have to undergo surgery to repair the injury in January of 2024, it left fans wondering when they would see “The Queen” next.
Would fans rally around Flair when she eventually returns, be that either at Survivor Series 2024 or even in the 2025 Royal Rumble? Or would she return with a serious chip on her shoulder, becoming the biggest heel of her professional wrestling career? While only time will tell, one person who is pretty confident that”The Queen” will return bigger and better than ever before is none other than her father, Ric Flair, who is currently working for AEW as part of a branding deal with Woooo! Energy.
Discussing Charlotte's exit and expected absence on Casual Conversations, “Slick” Ric let it be known that, in his opinion, not only is his daughter the best wrestler in the world today regardless of gender, but someone who is about to go on an all-time great run when she returns.
“She's the best worker in the business. Man or woman. She can do stuff Rey Mysterio does. She is the best worker in the business, male or female. She never politics. In this horrible world of politics in the business, she doesn't kiss anybody's a**,” Ric Flair said via 411 Mania. “She just gets better every day. She'll come back from this injury, it's stressing her out because she hasn't been hurt in a long time, but she's so muscled up. She'll come through the surgery, they'll put some stem cells in her, she'll come back, and it'll be the greatest storyline of all time. She and Bayley, IYO, Asuka. There are more people for her to wrestle. She has so much going on. I'm not knocking any of the other girls. Someone has to be the best, that's just the way it is.”
Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, glossing over that Flair is the “best worker in the business” line, which is pretty tough point to argue in 2023, the greatest storyline of all time? Goodness, the return of Charlotte, which happens once every nine months or so since she's a borderline part-timer at this point, probably won't even be the best storyline of her own career, let alone by a Flair, as his own storylines alongside the likes of Sting and Shawn Michaels clearly proves. Still, good on Ric for standing up for his daughter, that's meaningful even if his words are a tad hyperbolic.
Sean Durkin reveals how he cast Ric Flair in The Iron Claw.
While there's only one Ric Flair, a man so versatile he can do everything from manage Sting to sell Wooooings, there's another man besides Richard Fliehr to wear the moniker in 2023, as actor Aaron Dean Eisenberg actually filled his gator skin designer shoes in Sean Durkin's The Iron Claw movie for A24.
Discussing how he cast one of the most iconic performers of all time for a small part in the upcoming Von Erichs biopic with Comicbook.com, Durkin revealed that it was as simple as making a phone call to one of his former co-workers.
“It was hard to cast in terms of ‘How am I ever going to get someone to play Ric Flair?' But it wasn't, because I knew who the person [Flair] was. Aaron Dean Eisenberg – who plays Ric Flair in the movie – I'd done a show with him called Dead Ringers,” Sean Durkin told Comicbook.com “And he came in and did an episode for me and was just incredible and just had this wildness to him and I just had this idea. So I called him at one point and I said ‘Would you do me a favor? It's quite a small role, but uh, you know, it's Ric Flair [laughs]. And he was like “Absolutely!” And he actually really trained and bulked up and really went for it. Yeah. It was amazing.”
Unfortunately for both Eisenberg and Durkin, many, if not most reviews of The Iron Claw single out the portrayal of Flair as one of the true low points of the film, as few actors, nay, human beings have the same level of incredibly unique energy as the “Rolex wearing, diamond ring wearing, kiss stealing (WOO!) Wheeling dealing, Limousine riding, Jet Flying, son of a gun.” Though it may not have been the most believable casting, as they don't really look much alike, Durkin should have just thrown a blonde wig on MJF instead of playing Lance Von Erich and called it a day, as he's already got the strut down.
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