More details have come out about Ric Flair’s upcoming ’30 For 30′ documentary on ESPN, directly from the man (to beat the man) himself. On a recent episode of his podcast WOOOOO! Nation, Flair talked about what we can expect from the special:
Well, it’s my whole life. It’s got a little bit to do with my airplane crash, of course, and then coming back from that. And then the titles and the championships and it touches a lot on my personal life, which has been up and down. Right now, it’s perfect, but I had a couple rough years there. And it talks about my son, Reid. [ESPN] wanted to talk about him, how special he was to me. And then, a lot about Ashley, Charlotte, who is now the champion in WWE, the Divas division. And about my other two children, Megan and David. So, it was very nice. And then, it talked about where I am today.
Flair goes on to say that WWE is “very, very protective of their intellectual property,” and it took almost a year and a half for both WWE and ESPN to get on the same page. The main sticking point was allowing ESPN to use WWE-owned footage, but “all of a sudden it’s come to fruition.”
Flair explains that ESPN was actually interested in producing a documentary special on Andre the Giant, but ultimately went with Flair. This is interesting, given the recent parting of ways with Bill Simmons and subsequent shooting of his beloved ESPN offshoot Grantland into the sun. Now that Simmons is with HBO, one of the first projects revealed was a documentary on the life and times of Andre the Giant.
Is the sudden hustle on the Flair doc sketchy as hell? Sure. Would a major corporation like WWE or ESPN ever do anything to spite a former employee? Haha, good god, of course they would. Either way, if these two companies want to have a wrestling documentary sandbox fight, I’m more than willing to sit back and reap the beautifully shot, well-researched benefits.
