According to Tuesday’s edition of the Wooo! Nation podcast, nobody let Ric Flair know that WWE Raw would be using his son Reid — who died of an accidental heroin overdose in 2013 at the young age of 24 — as a plot point in the Divas Championship contract signing that ended the show, and that it made him cry. You’d think being a 16-time World Champion and a 2-time WWE Hall of Famer would earn you the right to a “heads up” if they were planning to use your deceased child in a story, but here we are.
While our sources said that Flair’s daughter and current Divas Champion Charlotte was the one who initially suggested using Reid in the promo, Flair believes the opposite, saying Charlotte agreed to go along with it because she didn’t want to “rock the boat,” and that she doesn’t “feel comfortable saying no to anybody yet.”
Here are Flair’s comments:
“That would be my take on it, but that doesn’t mean I’m right. I do know she would never be for rocking the boat right now. She’s in a very unique and a really really great position with them and she’ll be there as long as she wants to be… but I don’t think she feels comfortable saying no to anybody yet.”
“In the business, I mean how many people, I’ll pose the question to you, ‘How many people in your company can tell you what to do?’ And you tell them to do something, are you gonna take time to listen to everyone and say, ‘Listen, I don’t have to explain to you why I want you to do it. Do it.’ Is that fair to say? Because you can’t run a successful company and listen to 40 people complain about their individual likes and dislikes. Is that fair? And I would assume with your success and rate of growth with which your company is growing, you got bigger obstacles in your path like recruiting new people. As your company grows, you can’t have somebody that’s been there for awhile asking why when or where or how. And that’s no different than in wrestling except, in wrestling, it might be a little more insensitive, but that’s the nature of the beast.”
“Obviously, I have an opinion, but I’m afraid to voice it because I don’t want anything to affect [Charlotte’s] career. I know that Hunter and Stephanie and Michael Hayes have her back.”
As for whether or not he’ll be at Survivor Series to watch the match this Sunday, Flair remained positive.
“I’ll be at Survivor Series and can’t wait to get there. And by the time I get there, this will be old news and [Charlotte] and Paige will have a phenomenal match, and if anything else, we came out of it with a definitive bad guy and definitive good guy.”
