On episode 28 of WOOOOO! Nation with Ric Flair, the WWE Hall of Famer talked about when he knew Shawn Michaels was something special and the group Evolution (Flair, Triple H, Batista, and Randy Orton). Here is what Flair had to say about those topics.
On when he knew Shawn Michaels was special:
“Yes, I sure did. We only had four minutes to wrestle [on WWF Prime Time], but I knew. I’d seen him and he was still in the tag team situation. But yeah, he was tremendous. Yep, I sure did.”
On how Evolution came together:
“Evolution, [the] complete idea came about as a result of Hunter wanting to bring up some young guys. And Hunter and I were very close friends and he said, ‘what do you think about this and that?’, and I didn’t know Randy [Orton] and Dave [Batista] at the time. And they got there, Hunter came up with the name, and talked about different names. And it just was a fresh start for those guys, a fresh start for me, it gave me an opportunity to position myself with some great young athletes and, at that time, probably the best worker in the business, Hunter, either it would be Hunter or Shawn, and I couldn’t be in a better place. But we had a lot of fun together. Just Randy and Dave were just great guys and to this day, I remain very friendly with them.”
“There [are] not any Evolution stories. I couldn’t get Hunter to have a glass of wine if I had a million dollars. It didn’t happen. Now, Dave Batista, I did go out with a few times, Randy a few times, but I was very conservative. Those guys, both wonderful guys. Now Dave, I did get him to take off his shirt a few times in a bar when Hunter wasn’t around.”
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