Ric Flair

Ric Flair first married Leslie Goodman on August 28, 1971. Together the couple had two children Megan and David. The legally couple parted way in 1983 after being together for 12 years.

In the same year on August 27, 1983, Flair married Elizabeth Harrell. The couple had two children together Ashley and Reid. Elizabeth even appeared on WCW on several occasions. The couple, however, separated in 2006.

On 27 May 2006, Flair married Tiffany VanDemark. But their marriage was short-lived and their divorce was finalised in 2009.

Ric Flair was born Fred Phillips on February 25, 1949, in Memphis, Tennessee, to Luther and Olive Phillips. However, he was later adopted from the Tennessee Children’s Home Society by Richard Reid Fliehr and Kathleen Virginia Kinsmiller and was named Richard Morgan Fliehr. His adoptive father worked as a physician while his adoptive mother was an actress.

He then moved with his new family to Edina, Minnesota, where he attended the Wayland Academy. In school, he was an active sportsman with keen interest in football, track and wrestling.

He became an amateur wrestler even before enrolling with the University of Minnesota on a football scholarship and dropped out of college soon after completing his freshman year. While working as a bouncer at a club, he happened to meet Olympic weightlifter, Ken Patera, who introduced him to American Wrestling Association (AWA) promoter, Verne Gagne. Gagne agreed to take Flair under his wing and had him registered as a member of his training class.

In 1971, Richard Morgan Fliehr joined Gagne's wrestling camp which was set-up at Gagne’s barn outside Minneapolis. He trained along with Gagne’s son Greg Gagne, Jim Brunzell, The Iron Sheik and Ken Patera.

He took up the ring name ‘Ric Flair’ and had his first match against George "Scrap Iron" Gadaski in December 1972 in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. The match ended up in a 10-minute draw.

Flair quit AWA and joined the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in 1974. He bagged his first singles title on February 8, 1975 after he beat Paul Jones for the NWA Mid-Atlantic TV Championship.

On October 4, 1975, Flair along with Johnny Valentine "Mr. Wrestling I" Tim Woods, Bob Bruggers, and promoter David Crockett boarded a plane which crashed in Wilmington, North Carolina. The crash killed the pilot and severely injured the rest. Flair, who was 26 years old then, suffered a back injury and was told that he would not be able to wrestle ever again.

Flair, however, decided not to give up and underwent a lot of physical therapy to be able to get back on his feet. His efforts paid off and he was back in the ring within a year of the accident.

Ric Flair is the only two-time inductee of the WWE ‘Hall of Fame’. The first time he was inducted with the class of 2008 for his contribution to wrestling as an individual wrestler and the second time in 2012 as one of the members of the team ‘The Four Horsemen’.