Before They Were Stars: Ric Flair (with brown hair!) Wrestles a Match in 1974

It’s hard to believe it, but long before his days of bleached-blonde hair and sequin robes, Ric Flair started off his career in the wrestling business as an indistinct brown-haired chubby guy. Here’s some rare 1974 footage of him wrestling a match in the American Wrestling Association against Chris Taylor, a large former Olympic wrestler who would be dead in five years. Anyway, I have to confess that my main reason for doing a “Before They Were Stars” feature on Ric Flair was to segue into a cheap plug. Because yours truly got a mention at Cracked yesterday at the end of John Cheese’s latest column, “The 5 Saddest Second Careers of Celebrities”! Cheese went into the Cracked Comedy Workshop last weekend asking his fellow writers for suggestions to use in his column, and my suggestion for “Ric Flair Finance” made the cut. Unfortunately, as big a Flair fan as I am, the man’s financial life is a complete epic disaster!