Last fall, Ric Flair endured a medical emergency that had the wrestling world bracing for morbid news. The 16-time Champion made a full recovery, but he’s slated for yet another trip to the operating table this year.
The Wrestling Observer Newsletter reports that Flair will undergo a “very serious” surgery on July 9th to remove a colostomy bag that was installed after his life-saving surgeries this fall.
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Per the Observer, Flair wants to ramp up his training and this surgery will help him achieve that.
This will hopefully the final hoop The Nature Boy will have to jump through to reach optimal health—something that looked impossible during his health scare. He chronicled his saga on Busted Open Radio:
“I had ten days of life support, brother, that would wake anybody up,” Flair said. “I’m just lucky I’m here, I just kind of take each day, I don’t take anything for granted anymore. They gave me a 20 percent chance of living and somehow I made (it).”
As we reported extensively on during the scare, Flair was hospitalized due to multiple health issues, including an intestinal blockage. He also had surgery to install an internal pacemaker. He had previously been using an external pacemaker.
Flair elaborated on how his years of drinking and partying hard on the road, unfortunately, made his situation worse.
“When I got out I only weighed 206 pounds, I lost 43 pounds. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t even twist the top off a Gatorade bottle. I could stand on my legs, but I couldn’t walk, so I had to go to a rehab place for 20 days of physical rehab where they make you walk with a walker and then a cane and then you learn to walk by yourself,” he said.
According to Flair, the simple task of eating proved to be quite the hurdle.
“That took a while, and then I couldn’t drive a car. I ate anything in the world, but couldn’t gain any weight because all the food I was consuming was going towards repairing internal tissue that was ruined because when I went into the hospital my kidneys failed, I had respiratory heart failure and I had pneumonia all at the same time. Brother, I don’t drink anymore… The doctor told me if I ever had a drink again, I wouldn’t make it through another operation like that.”
Hopefully, the Nature Boy can resume a normal life after the July 9th procedure.
