A doomed flight in October 1975 nearly ended the career of one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time – Ric Flair.
The infamous flight would end the careers of Johnny Valentine and Bob Bruggers, and in addition to Flair, would seriously injure “Mr. Wrestling” Tim Woods, and David Crockett.
Speaking on the “Full Send” podcast, Flair reflected on the crash and the warning signs before they took off. He said,
“I was in a bar one night. This guy came up to me and said, ‘You guys drive everywhere?’ I said, ‘Yeah, it’s a lot.’ He goes, ‘I got a plane.’ ‘You do?’
“We should have known there was something wrong with the guy because he hit a jet stream one time … the plane, it went upside-down.”
Flair went on to say that each passenger was charged $100 for the flight and that the pilot did not have a pilot’s license. He added,
“We compensated for [the plane] being overweight [by] 1,400 pounds — unbeknownst to us — by carrying less fuel, and we hit a headwind. Wilmington’s on the coast. And what he should’ve done is land in Raleigh and refueled, but it was 100 miles more [to Wilmington] and I guess he thought he could push it. So we crashed less than a quarter-mile away from the runway.
“On a smaller plane, when they mix the fuel, the engine goes [imitates specific engine noise] ’til they fix the mixture on a prop plane? That noise used to drive me crazy.”
Despite the consensus among some at the time that Flair’s career was over, he would return to action relatively quickly and continue what’d become a legendary career.
Flair’s plane crash came less than eight months after another flight in 1975 killed Bobby Shane, retired Buddy Colt, and also severely injured Gary Hart and Austin Idol.
