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GUEST EDITORIAL
By Mike Shecket of Columbus, Ohio., PWTorch.com reader

There is no question that the Ric Flair retirement angle as currently booked is a major disappointment, as is most of what passes for booking these days at the top level of pro wrestling. Steve Austin's variation on the angle, as recently reported in more detail on Dot Net (Original Story), is closer to the right idea, and more respectful of The Man, but it still falls short. Ric Flair should retire as a heel, and this is how it should go down.

These are the operative facts: First, Ric Flair has done his best work over the course of his career as a heel. Second, he is 59 years old, and it's not credible for him to get clean wins over much younger workers. Finally, Flair's greatest strength at this point in his career is on the mic.

Flair should make a return to television after a hiatus of at least several months. He should offer his services as a manager and adviser to an up-and-coming face or tweener, perhaps in the mold of C.M. Punk or Carlito. With Flair's guidance, his protégé moves up the ranks over a period of several pay-per-views, garnering victories and lower-level titles on the way to a shot at "a" World Championship. In the lead-up to this young wrestler's title win, Flair asks him for just one favor: give me one last shot at the title, just for old times' sake. His apprentice replies that of course, it would be an honor, and may the best man win.

At the next pay-per-view, Flair is in the ring, raising the new champion's arm in victory. As the champ mounts successful title defenses on the subsequent weekly TV shows, signs of friction with Flair begin to appear: theprotégé is repeatedly criticized for any imperfection and told that "the Nature Boy would have done it this way". Finally, at the last show before the PPV, Flair is mildly rebuked by his charge: "If you think you know how to do it better than me, then show me, in the ring, this Sunday." Thus, some level of heat is generated for the upcoming main event though it is still presented as face versus face.

Flair's title shot is booked as the last match, but a very strong, twenty-minute plus match should be booked in the "semi-main" slot, with about 30 minutes of satellite time remaining at its conclusion. The champ comes out first, followed by Flair with an extended, emotional entrance. What follows is, granted, essentially a retread of the 1999 Hogan-Nash "Fingerpoke of Doom."

The two "competitors" are shown to have been in cahoots all along as the younger wrestler lies down for his hero and the referee reluctantly counts the pin. Flair cuts a money promo under a rain of garbage: he is stylin', he is profilin', he's a beautiful man, he's the greatest wrestler in history, and at 59 years old, he's the greatest wrestler in the world today. In short, the Nature Boy is back, and he's more manic and delusional than ever before.

The younger wrestler's motivation is soon revealed: he is a fawning Ric Flair superfan beyond all logic--in a video promo, we enter his home, where he proudly displays a closet full of identical Flair t-shirts and a bookshelf of hundreds of identical copies of Flair's DVD collection. His main role in the months to follow is to perform all of Flair's dirty work, including interfering in Flair's title defenses in devastating fashion, thus building him up as a monster even as he rarely competes for himself.

Flair, for his part, cuts at least one promo per show, in which he shows himself to be out of touch with reality in an extremely entertaining way. These promos should be largely unscripted: Flair's talent and professional judgment ought to be trusted. On this retirement tour, he should trot out all the classic Nature Boy tropes, while inventing a few new ones.

Physically, his appearance and abilities are exactly what we would expect from a man of his age, and completely unbecoming of a world champion. Yet he goes on an extended winning streak in which he survives as champion by resorting to more and more outrageous heights of cheating. We see him cheat in ways nobody has cheated in decades, and we see him cheat in ways that no one has ever cheated before. More and more stringent match stipulations are adopted, but each time he weasels his way out of the jam, often with the physical intervention of his younger partner in crime.

Over time, one popular or rising face becomes the focal point of this classic chase. After Flair narrowly escapes defeat in several meetings, the blowoff, with a retirement stipulation, is scheduled for Wrestlemania, with a gimmick designed to force the Nature Boy to defend his title legitimately. In this match, Flair sells a huge physical disadvantage, but survives for some time due to superior intuition and psychology.

Finally, after being booed lustily through the duration of the match, Flair loses cleanly to the challenger's finisher. The victor is given several minutes to celebrate, perhaps with the vanquished Nature Boy down and out on the canvas. Then the new champion makes a quick exit. Now, if everything has been booked correctly, Flair should come to his feet with a standing ovation and an overwhelming roar of appreciation. At this point, he drops the character and acknowledges the fans precisely as dictated by his emotions at that moment. He takes exactly as long as he needs, and when he's through, he slowly makes his way to the back in quiet dignity. And that's the last we see of Ric Flair in a wrestling ring.

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