Earlier this month, Ric Flair did an hour-long interview with Biff Poggi, now with News Nation. It covered most of the topics we’re used to hearing when the legendary Nature Boy gets to talk into a microphone these days. We’re blogging about it because a quote from it is making the rounds on the wrestle web today (Oct. 21).
It’s part of Flair’s wide-ranging answer to Poggi’s question about how wrestling companies decide who to make world champions. That leads to Naitch calling his current boss at AEW
the greatest wrestling promoter ever, which he quickly discounts to praise an old boss from WWE, then returns to praising TK for non-wrestling reasons before reminding us why Ric’s putting over Khan in such an extravagant manner.
“It’s internal. I don’t know who makes the final decisions, but I don’t know. I mean, with Tony Khan, who runs who runs AEW, who is really one of the most wonderful people I’ve ever known — Tony has a group of people, which I’m sure they do at WWE, that um he circles up with. And Tony, Tony does it right there.
“Tony Khan may be the greatest promoter of all time [Poggi asks ‘in wrestling or in anything’] I’m saying in wrestling.
“He may not be be as smart as Vince McMahon, but only through, you know, years and years because Vince was really smart and very clever. But Tony’s a great guy. Generous to generous to a fault. you know, with all the work that he has, he does three TV shows a week, and the Jaguars — who are kicking ass right now — he’ll be in England with the Jaguars. I mean, he just keeps moving, man. He’s got that Leer jet. He’s got a beautiful girlfriend. He’s a nice guy. He’s generous. I work for him. I work for him and I don’t do anything.”
Flair’s been under contract to AEW since 2023, when he joined for Sting’s retirement storyline via a sponsorship with one of his many licensed products (Wooooo! Energy drinks). That deal is no longer in place, but Naitch remains under contract despite rarely even appearing on the company’s behalf.
He explained that to Poggi before getting in a few “concerns” about WWE under its current owners:
“I think he takes care of me out of respect for me and Yeah. Yeah, he grew up on me and he’s just a wonderful guy and it’s not that the guys of the WWE — I just think that they’re all trying to hang on to their job, because you never know. They’ve fired so many people that were an intricate part of my career when I was there. I don’t understand the rhyme or reason for it. Some of the guys that did my documentary on Peacock… two of the guys that helped produce it have been fired.
“They just they do what they want to do. And it’s not WWE anymore, it’s who bought them, they bought UFC, too… TKO. And I don’t know who runs TKO. I think Nick Khan is is pretty much the boss over there, but at the same time, I don’t know how much power Nick Khan has. He used to be the man.
“But you know Hunter is a booker now, or the head of creative they call it. He surrounds himself with people but there are people quitting left and right. They just can’t take the the hours, you know…”
As I wrote earlier, if you’ve heard many interviews with the 77-year-old Flair over the past several years, you know to take most everything with a grain of salt. Now that this snippet of his chat with Poggi is being aggregated, I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a statement reframing this quote from Naitch or his team on social media.
Give us your take on Flair’s greatest promoter ranking below.
