The infamous plane crash could have changed much of what occurred over the last three decades, but thankfully, Flair was able to fully recover and become arguably the most decorated name in pro wrestling history. However, back in the 1970s, the Internet didn't exist, and the wrestling business was divided into separate territories.
Again, two of the four wrestlers on the plane (including Johnny Valentine) were so badly hurt that they never wrestled again, the pilot was fucking killed and the fourth wrestler (who was actually Ric Flair) didn't do another match for six months. However, 1975 was a tragic year of plane crashes. Being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in both 2008 and 2012, the career of Ric Flair as a professional wrestler could have been done in 1975, which would have left fans without experiencing over 30 years of rich history. Santo carried around a separate set of masks for certain occasions. Two crashes occurred just under eight months apart, which changed the wrestling world forever. Thanks for connecting! Chris Featherstone is a WWE Contributor for FanBuzz. Capitalizing on Flair’s star power, he won the WWE Championship at the 1992 Royal Rumble match, before losing the title to Randy Savage at WrestleMania VIII. 1975 was a disastrous year in regards to air travel. Ric Flair survived a plane crash… and that crash inspired him to become the #NatureBoy. After all, he had just won the Heavyweight Championship from Wahoo McDaniel. And that wasn't all. He went on to have a very successful career in the WWF and even earned himself a role alongside Johnny Depp in Tim Burton's Ed Wood. Cracked is published by Literally Media Ltd., Tim Woods Breaks His Back in a Plane Crash, Stays in Character, Nelson Scott Simpson Legally Pretends to Be Russian ... for Eight Years, George "The Animal" Steele Lives With Separate Wrestler and Schoolteacher Alter Egos, Wrestlers Get Arrested for Refusing to Break Character, The World's Most Famous Masked Wrestler Refuses to Take Off His Mask ... for 40 Years, 5 Insane True Tales of Wrestlers Refusing to Break Character, Why A Minor Detail Causes The 'Tony Hawk' Remake To Fall Apart, A Koozie For Your Burrito Is Peak Genius (Or Madness? You see, despite this, rumors still began to circulate that Mr. Wrestling had in fact been in a plane crash with Johnny Valentine, so Woods did the only logical thing: He wrestled two weeks after the crash and acted like his back wasn't broken. Find out why this McDonnell Douglas DC-10 crashed immediately after takeoff from Chicago O'Hare, making this accident Americas's worst air disaster. He suffered a back injury so severe that he was paralyzed for life. For example, it was impossible for him to eat anything while wearing his traditional mask without it looking like his mouth was having a miscarriage, so he had a special "mealtime" version he could change into with the chin cut away. The incident probably evoked memories of the two plane crashes in 1975 for many pro-wrestling historians and long-time fans. To shut them up, Myers would retort, "Do you really think I'm that ugly?". Intelligent, well-spoken James Myers worked as a physical education teacher at a high school in Madison Heights, Michigan. Wrestling” Tim Woods, and promoter David Crockett. This wouldn't be possible today, obviously -- the Internet would track him down within 30 seconds. This made for a bitterly inconvenient half-century. One of the wrestlers on board was Tim Woods, also known as Mr. Wrestling (presumably because he spent all his imagination on "Mr."). Profile Explanation [Late Legend - Technical]. Flair’s second and final WWE Championship win ended by the hands of Bret Hart a little over a month later. Ric Flair is undoubtedly one of the greatest wrestlers of all time.
They would only grunt in a primitive dialect, and their manager, Captain Lou Albano, did all the talking for them.
While these two crashes in 1975 are well-known, there was one the previous year that is often overlooked. The Wild Samoans figured it was better for the three of them to go to jail than break character. In October 1975, a Cessna 310 plane crashed while transporting a promoter and four wrestlers to a match in North Carolina. Each passenger was seriously injured from the crash, and Valentine was forced to retire. Woods suffered a concussion, bruised ribs and a compression fracture in his back. Robin Warder is the co-owner of a pop culture website called The Back Row. There are other lesser known airplane crashes that claimed the life of lesser known pro-wrestlers in the 1940s -. Copyright ©2005-2020. George Mack (1945), Jack Ross (1945) and Joe Lynam (1948). Tim Woods had no business doing what basically equates to stunt work before he had completely recovered from the crash, but damn it, the mythology of Mr. Wrestling had to be protected at all costs.