The SBP Archives - Your less than frequent dose of SBP!

There isn't a lot of nice things to say about the WWE these days (well, some might say there's never anything good to come out of the world of professional wrestling), but it has been magnified tenfold with the Benoit murders last year and the names of more & more past stars of the business surfacing as being found dead while still in their 30s and 40s. I certainly have voiced my discontent on the way the industry has made very little strides in trying to correct past errors to ensure current performers don't encounter the same fate as those who left us much too early. A "wellness" policy has started to be enforced, but whether it succeeds only time will tell.

So I guess when I tuned in to the last 15 minutes of Monday Night Raw last night, it was nice to see, well, a nice thing happen that was essentially a genuine display of emotion by the WWE roster as well as the fans in attendance when they said their final farewells to 36 year in-ring veteran Ric Flair.

Of course, in wrestling, "retirements" are a running joke. It is one of the few athletic professions where a 50 something past-his-prime star can return to the ring for another match. The allure of being under the spotlights and hearing the roars of the crowd can be hard to get away from for some. But for Ric Flair, at 59 years old, I really do think he had his last match this past Sunday at the "biggest spectacle of them all," Wrestlemania. So on Monday night, he came out in his suit to say a final goodbye to the fans, and all the wrestlers past and present came out to reciprocate. His family was also there to share the moment with him. He was one of the best in the business, and even in his 50s still had enough in the tank to put on a decent show.

I remember two or three years ago he had a tables, ladders and chair match against Edge (yes, a match where these objects are not only allowed but encouraged), and I just kept thinking to myself how crazy it is to see this guy in his mid 50s go through tables and get cracked over the head a few times with a steel chair, all in the name of entertaining the crowd with his crazy stunts. It's choreographed, but it hurts nonetheless.

Flair might be back in some capacity, maybe as a part of the creative team or something to that effect. But in any case, last night there was actually something nice to see about wrestling, one of the few last remnants of the 1980s wrestling boom saying goodbye with style, class and dignity: Three things that are usually absent when viewing a wrestling match.