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If you were one of the legions of fans who tuned in to the antics of early 1980s wrestling, yelling out \u201cWOOOO!\u201d should invoke a smile and more than a few fond memories. Wrestling hit differently back then: the lack of fear around script decisions, the chaotic personalities and the showmanship that brought it all together for our enjoyment. These men made it their lives\u2019 mission to entertain us\u2014and entertain they did.<\/p>\n
One man who personified the excitement and paved the way for The Rock (Dwayne Johnson), Shawn Michaels and \u201cStone Cold\u201d Steve Austin is none other than \u201cNature Boy\u201d Ric Flair. Considered one of the greatest wrestlers of all time, Flair is a father, a successful entrepreneur and, more recently, a cannabis advocate. However, he\u2019s also faced his fair share of adversities on the wild ride that\u2019s been his storied career in professional wrestling.<\/p>\n
\u201cBack in the day, mental health wasn\u2019t really a thing; we didn\u2019t really know what anxiety was\u2014we pushed through everything and used various drugs as coping mechanisms,\u201d Flair says. \u201cNo one understands how badly anxiety affected me in the worst ways. I\u2019m happy to be on the other end of that, and the happiest I\u2019ve ever been.\u201d<\/p>\n
But it wasn\u2019t always like that for Flair, who was an active name in the wrestling circuit for years before making a name for himself in professional wrestling. In the early 1980s, Flair was wrestling for Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) as the \u201cNature Boy,\u201d the persona he created that was an over-the-top ladies\u2019 man, traveling 3,000 miles a week, city-by-city, putting on a show then hitting the local watering holes. Flair credits the song \u201cGreat Balls of Fire\u201d by Jerry Lee Lewis for giving him the inspiration to start screaming \u201cWOOOOO!\u201d as part of his act\u2014needless to say, it stuck. A few years later, as he was moving back and forth between organizations (WWF to WCW to WWE) is when Flair says he first encountered anxiety.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cBack then I had no idea what it was,\u201d he says. \u201cI went from being at the top of my game to producers wanting me to shave my head and change who I naturally felt inclined to be. It messed me up. I was loyal to NWA (a promotions company affiliated with WCW at the time, under Ted Turner\u2019s leadership) and didn\u2019t want to go back to WWF.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And so began Flair\u2019s relationship with Alprazolam (Xanax), specifically to help him wind down and get rest. \u201cI\u2019m happy to be one of the few wrestlers who never really had any pain\u2014painkillers weren\u2019t my thing. I just relied on Xanax for sleep,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n Fortunately, Flair\u2019s identity crisis was short-lived and by 1991, he was able to maintain his over-the-top character and ring-dominating performances, which drew viewers from across the country. \u201cAt the end of the day, it\u2019s about catching the attention of Vince McMahon, at all costs,\u201d Flair says. \u201cHe\u2019s the greatest showman of our time; nothing is off the table if it means entertaining the crowds.\u201d<\/p>\n The wrestlers of the 1980s and \u201990s were known for performing at all costs\u2014and Flair was no exception. \u201cI wrestled injured all the time\u2014we\u2019d just numb whatever was bothering us at the time and keep going,\u201d he says. While opioids and other narcotics became prevalent in the dressing room, Flair stuck to his guns and stayed clean. \u201cI wrestled guys who were drunk all the time. They\u2019d party in the dressing room just to keep themselves energized and performance-ready.\u201d<\/p>\n And for years, that was the norm. Athletes\u2014of any stripe\u2014only had access to narcotics; cannabis was neither accessible nor accepted for daily use.<\/p>\n Fast-forward to 2023, and it\u2019s clear we\u2019re moving on. Cannabis has gone from fringe conversation to global front-page news. Canada federally legalized it; the US is seeing a slower federal acceptance, but acceptance, nonetheless. Several professional sports associations, including the NBA, have dropped it from their banned substances list. \u201cThe good thing is that there\u2019s no stigma among the wrestlers around its use; of course, that\u2019s unless they enter the ring impaired,\u201d Flair says. \u201cUnlike the old days, the WWE today has taken a strong stance around coming to the ring sober. It\u2019s a big deal to them.\u201d<\/p>\n You could say that life has come full circle for Flair since his 2008 retirement from full-time wrestling with WWE (the WWF\u2019s new moniker). While Flair remained a household name, made appearances, and continued being his natural showman self, his career re-exploded in 2017 when rappers Offset and 21 Savage and producer Metro Boomin released the song \u201cRic Flair Drip,\u201d which charted at number 71 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has since surpassed an astonishing 2 billion streams. \u201cI had just gotten out of the hospital and had no representation; I\u2019ve since trademarked \u2018Ric Flair Drip\u2019 and realized I needed to capitalize on the phrase moving forward,\u201d Flair says. \u201cNow that I have proper representation, I\u2019m making more money than I ever have.\u201d<\/p>\n That representation is Carma Holdings, the prolific brand house behind Mike Tyson and his Tyson 2.0 line of cannabis products, including the popular Tyson Bites ear-shaped edibles. Carma Holdings is led by serial entrepreneurs Adam Wilks and Chad Bronstein, whom Flair met during a chance encounter in Tampa. \u201cI met Chad when our boats were side by side in Tampa. We just clicked,\u201d Flair says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Carma Holdings CEO Adam Wilks says that the brand has been an instant hit, onboarding 17 states in just 30 days. \u201cOur accessories have \u2018Ric Flair Drip\u2019 all over them\u2014not just in dispensaries, which command more than a thousand retail points in their own right,\u201d Wilks says. \u201cWe have 50,000 retail touch points across the globe.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n And they\u2019re only just getting started. In a few short years, Carma Holdings has become one of the parent companies to some of the fastest-growing brands in cannabis, including Tyson 2.0, Rick Flair Drip and It\u2019s widely known that the cannabis industry isn\u2019t all rainbows and unicorns. Most brands struggle\u2014specifically those associated with celebrities. This makes Carma an outlier. \u201cWe\u2019re successful because we\u2019re empowering a sense of well-being,\u201d Wilks says. \u201cOur celebrity house of brands is driven by our commitment to authenticity, innovation and transformative experiences.\u201d<\/p>\n While all this is happening, Ric Flair is living his best, most healthy life. Now 74, he\u2019s still on the same daily exercise regime, traveling the world, preaching about how the \u201cgummies saved me,\u201d with the famed sparkle in his eye that\u2019s won over his fans for the last four decades.<\/p>\n Will he ever wrestle again? You know we had to ask. \u201cAbsolutely, WOOOOO!<\/em>\u201d he says. \u201cI have more in me, and I\u2019m excited to keep going. I\u2019d like to have another bout because I know what I did wrong before. I was away for a minute, and I got rusty,\u201d Flair says. \u201cWhat makes this new life in cannabis unique is that I enjoy going to work every day, regardless of what\u2019s in store for me.\u201d<\/p>\n This story was originally published in issue 49 of the\u00a0print edition<\/a>\u00a0of Cannabis Now. Read it now on the Cannabis Now\u00a0iTunes app<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n The post Ric Flair\u2019s Back In the Ring<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
If you were one of the legions of fans who tuned in to the antics of early 1980s wrestling, yelling out \u201cWOOOO!\u201d should invoke a smile and more than a few fond memories. Wrestling hit differently back then: the lack of fear around script decisions, the chaotic personalities and theContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":555,"featured_media":71708,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[16402,17566,50,6459,111,17220,85,17221,65,17404,17465,420],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71707"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/555"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71707"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71707\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71709,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71707\/revisions\/71709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71708"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Ric](\"https:\/\/cannabisnow.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Ric-Flair-WWE.jpg\")
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EVOL by the rapper, Future. The company also recently announced a partnership with another
prolific old school wrestler, Hulk Hogan.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/a>
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\nRead More: Ric Flair\u2019s Back In the Ring<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"