An interesting side effect of WrestleMania being around the same time every year, but not exactly the same day, is that the anniversaries of previous WrestleMania milestones are all clustered together around the show. Today, in particular, marks two big ones.
10 years ago, on March 30th, 2008, Ric Flair had his retirement match against Shawn Michaels. It’s an amazing match, if you’ve somehow never watched it. Not so much for the workrate — although for a 59-year-old wrestling a 42-year-old, it’s not so bad — but for the drama and storytelling.
In the preceding months, Ric Flair had been wrestling with the ongoing stipulation that if he lost a match, he’d be forced to retire. He’d been beating the odds against guys like Triple H, William Regal, and even Mr. McMahon himself, but ultimately Shawn Michaels got the better of him at WrestleMania 24. The match is emotional throughout, with HBK full of regret about what he knows he must do. Before finishing Flair off, he famously mouths “I’m sorry. I love you.”
Ric Flair’s wife and children are at ringside, and the Nature Boy shares a tearful hug with each of them after the match. And yes, that means there’s an appearance by a 21-year-old Charlotte (just Ashley back then), who probably couldn’t have imagined that a decade later she’d be the one with a match on the WrestleMania card.
15 years ago today, WrestleMania 19 featured Stone Cold Steve Austin’s final match, which was against the Rock. Unlike Flair’s five years later, this one wasn’t an official or overt retirement match, but Stone Cold was dealing with serious injuries to his neck and both his knees — he wears braces on both legs in the ring — so it was certainly in the air that his wrestling days might be numbered.
It’s no Flair/Michaels, but there’s still plenty of drama in this match as well. The Rock steals Stone Cold’s vest and wears it to mock him, leading Austin to hit him with a Rock Bottom, and then the Rock flips him off and delivers a Stone Cold Stunner. As the match draws to a close, Stone Cold kicks out of two Rock Bottoms before the Rock manages to pin him after a third. Although there’s no announcement of Stone Cold’s retirement (which wasn’t even a definite fact yet) he gets one of those good exits where they play his music, even though he lost, and the crowd chants for him as he walks up the ramp.
Obviously Austin and Flair both went on to do other things in the business, both at WWE and in Flair’s case in Ring of Honor and TNA. Nevertheless, each of those matches represented the end of an era, as two of wrestling’s all-time most important performers fought in a WWE ring for the final time.
