Brian Fritz sent this in:
http://betweentheropes.com/301/episode-9-shane-ryan/
Shane Ryan of Grantland.com has wrote an extensive and fascinating story titled: “The Wrestler in Real Life: Ric Flair’s long, stead decline” detailing the amount of debt the ‘Nature Boy’ has built over the years. Brian Fritz of BetweenTheRopes.com spoke with Shane about how he came about writing the story, who is to blame for his problems, how much wrestling pays a part and much more.
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Here are some excerpts from the interview:
On how much of the problems Flair is facing is due to trusting the wrong people too much:
You wonder if it’s just that he had really bad luck or do you make your own bad luck. I think, when you’re as high profile as Flair, there will be no matter who you are or what you’re doing when you have that much money, there’s going to be people out there who maybe float a line to try and take advantage of you and someone who’s a little more cautious would never get involved with these people beyond an initial discussion or something. But he did and it really hurt him. You really do wonder where does the line between bad luck and poor decision making converge.
On how Ric is able to still live a lavish lifestyle considering the amount of debt he has:
As to how he kept it going is a really hard question to answer. He certainly has a lot of income so there’s always that money coming in and I think until recently he didn’t have too many liens or levies on his money coming in … in the sense that whatever money he made it had to go to someone which is true now.
On how much money he owes right now:
I think it’s impossible (to know). You can only get the ones that have been brought to court. That’s all you can know about. So if he has debts to other people, even if he signed something, we can’t know that on public record until that person decides to sue him.