Woooooooo - it's over.

36 years, 16 world championships (22, in reality) and several incarnations of the 4 Horsemen later, Ric Flair finally delivered the speech he had meant to deliver months earlier - but I suspect someone suggested to him to go with the "career-threat from Vinnie Mac" plotline instead, at least until the alleged "grandest stage of them all" that is reputed to be Wrestlemania would come along - and the induction into the Hall of Fame as an *active* wrestler still.

And so he did wait out and stuck around, styling and profiling, for a few months still. And, after playing out scenario after scenario of "narrowingly escaping with his career intact" against the likes of "Umaga" (ugh), William Regal, Mr. Kennedy, Vince McMahon (sic) himself and even "best friend" Triple H (none of which would have EVER been deemed worthy of being "the one" to put the legendary Nature Boy Ric Flair into retirement) SLICK RIC finally did choose the opponent to whom he would truly "pass the torch" so to speak - Heartbreak Kid Shawn Michaels. HBK. The guy who idolized Ric Flair and whose only true heartbreaking has always been victimizing his own heart. This is just another example of it - though an allegorical one at best, as it truly doesn't mean a thing to whom Flair lost his final match; he just needed to be pinned for three seconds in order to finally -Woooooooo- call it a career. In order to be allowed to walk away from the squared circle; something several fans of his never wanted to see happen. In order to finally walk away from the squared circle. None wanted to see it ever happen. But every other member of the Four Horsemen is GONE already (save one - Sting aka Steve Borden, and he wasn't a Horsemen long. Double J, Jeff Jarrett, was also a Horseman but, according to Arn, he "doesn't count") and so, every other member being GONE already; Flair had to ride into the sunset as well.

The final farewell, the last speech, the emotional send-off, the ultimate "Wooooooooo" - well, it left something to be desired though.

I've long had my suspicion about Ric that, though he undeniably gave it his all each and every time he wrestled or, really, put on a show, he truly actually is uncomfortable with the crowd. They are "outsiders" to his world - he acknowledges them, as well he should, and knows fully well that "they made him what he is today" as he stated during the aforementioned final speech, but they remain "they" from out there. And his close circle of fans is who he belongs with; fellow wrestlers, friends, family. I thought 15 minutes would be too SHORT for the whole final farewell - I thought, no, I WAS SO SURE that he would have MUCH MORE TO SAY... But he didn't. He was done in five minutes, maybe LESS. Gee. Ric had much more to say in his WCW days. On the final WCW Monday Nitro show, he delivered such a great speech about his fellow WCW workers NOT having their lives "in Vince McMahon's hands" at all. Was this all "a shoot" as they say in the business? Was it all scripted material? I, for one, will continue to believe that it was a sincere, heartfelt discourse that came from the bottom of Flair's heart. And even a tad more heartfelt than his final speech on March 31st, 2008's edition of Monday Night Raw - for the just previously given reasons.

Ric Flair was not the first Nature Boy; Buddy Rogers was. He was not the first "platinum blonde with lots of panache" wrestling star either; Gorgeous George and Classie Freddie Blassie beat both Buddy Rogers and Flair to that distinction. Ric Flair remains unique and unimitable still: he had all of those guys' distinctive trademarks, and something more. He prefigured the likes of Triple H and HBK; Double J and Christian; Edge and Y2J Chris Jericho, inspiring them all to try and be "the next one" or the heir apparent, of course. The long list of imitators is virtually endless: Terry Taylor, Freebird Michael Hayes, WCW's own custom-made Maestro, the late Curt Hennig, Lex Luger, Nature Boy Buddy Landell and Extreme Horseman Steve Corino, to name but a few. None of them can get past the imitative stage though; for none of them can truly replicate "the dirtiest player in the game" at any point of his long and illustrious career.

Though Ric ended on a humble note, speech-wise (with the "thank you for making me what I am" line for the crowd) and competition-wise (with the choreographed -and teary- ending to his final match, as he awaited the coup-de-grâce from his opponent; a superkick, of all things) the flamboyant Ric Flair had to relive for a second and qualify, early in his final speech, his career as the "greatest career of all-time". Woooooooooo! Anything less coming from him would have been... unstylish and, ah, "unprofilish"? Let's just stick with actual English and say "uncharacteristic", ok?

However, at this stage, Flair did not have to be in-character anymore - when he was a "heel" (a term he hates to see being used by anyone outside the profession; "heel" is "villain" in layman's terms) such a cocky, vainglorious discourse was REQUIRED and even a pre-requisite for the fans to "catch on" (no pun intended here - even though, in France, they call wrestlers "catcheurs"). Now, in 2008, when all the masks are taken down and the masquerade is finally over, Ric Flair had to go with the fans "making him" so big for 36 long years of spanning the globe. "Making them happy," as he'd once said in a *true* genuine moment, was all he cared about - almost. Post-sendoff, Tully Blanchard confirmed that Ric Flair's preoccupation with making the wrestling fan happy was paramount to everything else in the five years Tully spent with Ric, Arn and the other Horsemen. This last speech felt too "staged" still, as it was - it was typical WWE fare, as it is, and a near-mockery of the great NWA/WCW heritage. Nowadays the WWE mocks its own past too, routinely - parading former top stars they used to have, as if to show the few fans left (!) that today's crop of "talent" is so much better... They can do that with the old WWF clowns of the 1980s (especially Terry Bollea and his cronies) but not with the NWA entourage: from Harley Race all the way down to Dusty Rhodes' youngest son!

All the more reason to feel lukewarm about the whole shebang, for me: for, even though all four were in the ring together again, Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson and Barry Windham were NOT doing what I wanted to see them do, once they'd get back in the ring together: and that is beat up Vince McMahon. Mercilessly.

"Woooooooooooooo!" optional.

Even once-a-Horseman Dean Malenko and erstwhile Horsemen manager J.J. Dillon were there - imagine, it could have been 6 on 1 (or 6 on 2, if Shane McMahon, once the make-believe owner of WCW, would come out too and TRY to defend his daddy-o...)

Well-deserved punishment, delivered Horsemen-style!

Fat chance it will EVER happen now...

Not that it matters anyway... Not anymore, it doesn't.

Narrow a word about those no longer "with us" - either from Flair, much less from Triple H... I didn't expect anything to be said about the one Horseman that should remain now, but that was taken away by the most horrid tragedy (Chris Benoit).
But surely Sherri Martel, Nancy Daus, Wahoo McDaniel, the Von Erichs and 1001 other opponents Flair faced in the past could have been mentioned and were worthy of being mentioned as people who helped "make Flair who he is"...

That they were all forgotten is not surprising though: the WWE forgot to induct The Fabulous Moolah into their precious Hall of Fame this year, and she just passed away so very recently... They thought they should rather induct the other old broad they overused and abused, Mae Young, while she's still alive to receive the accolade and thanks for degrading services rendered... And so they did the same thing with that Brisco guy... And Ric Flair himself.

Former Horsemen Ole Anderson, 'Sycho' Sid Vicious and Lex Luger were forgotten from either mention or invitation to appear again (for five seconds of screen time) for other reasons... It was already a lot of effort to remember to invite Greg 'The Hammer' Valentine and Ricky 'The Dragon' Steamboat, I'm sure... Not to mention 7-time world champion Harley Race (he whom the old WWE, then WWF, degraded by having him pose as a silly "King of the Ring" for the longest time - and then. most recently, having him being spat upon, in the face too, by "legend-killer" Randy Orton... Good thing too, by the way, that they allowed Flair to handpick who he would lose to in his final match; otherwise, the logical choice could have been Randy Orton. As it is, Orton was the first to "fail" in retiring the Nature Boy - and he allowed Flair to have his last moment of in-ring glory just the week prior to this final speech, on Raw, as he tapped out after Flair put him in his figure-four leglock... For the final time, yes... Still, it doesn't make up for the disrespect shown to Harley Race. At all.)

Ric Flair will not be a manager now?
He will not manage, like Classie Freddie Blassie did (and Harley Race as well) and make the difference for his team in the process?
It is not like he's never "retired" before and come back anyway, in some capacity, a short time afterwards...
Hopefully it won't be to manage a goofy duo like Blassie did, back in the day - his protégés were, of course, Nikolai Volkoff and the Iron Sheik!
If Flair manages anybody, it needs to be the elite - the new breed, the next generation of FOUR HORSEMEN.
(Hopefully comprised of Mr. Kennedy, C.W. Anderson, Simon Diamond and Sean O'Haire - but that's just me! Mike Saunders and Mark Jindrak can be considered too - and maybe even Steve Corino and Buddy Landell too...!)

Seeing Flair, Arn, Tully and Windham back together again made most everyone nostalgic and hopeful that there can be a revival of the Horsemen; simply hearing the classic WCW Horsemen theme music reverberating throughout a live arena again achieved that. Seeing them reunited -along with Dillon, Race, Steamboat and Valentine- on this somewhat ostentatious occasion, for sure, was far more tasteful and à-propos than the inane and pointless reappearance, 24 years later, of Iron Sheik and Nikolai Volkoff in mock "combat mode" - looking very ridiculous in the process. Much moreso than they did back in the day, yes... Back in 1984, they were a spoof; nowadays, they are old and should not have to make a spectacle of themselves like this anymore. Unless they really needed the money and McMahon pays well for a five-second in-ring appearance...

But anyhow - it is all a moot point now.
All of their careers are over.
They have survived the business, at least - unlike Benoit, Eddie Guerrero, ANDRÉ Roussimoff and so many others...

I could also be happy that Ric Flair got a real, grandiose goodbye - the likes of which Bret Hart and Hulk Hogan never had and never will have, respectively.
But I am lukewarm about that too, in truth...

Goodbye Ric Flair -
we hardly ever knew the TRUE YOU, even after all these years of watching you... and buying into what you so expertly sold us, you master showman you...!

You sure can make it in POLITICS now;
Jesse Ventura has nothing on you.

And me - I'll steadfastly remain lukewarm about THAT too...