Early Life
Richard Fleihr (Ric Flair) was born on February 25, 1949. In the opening chapter of his autobiography To Be the Man, he notes that his birth name is given on different documents as Fred. At the time of his adoption (arranged by the notorious Tennessee Children's Home Society, later shut down for adoption fraud), his father was completing a residency in Detroit. Shortly afterward, the family settled in Edina, Minnesota, where the young Richard Fliehr lived throughout his childhood. After grade 9, he attended Wayland Academy, a coeducational boarding school in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, for four years (five years total in high school) during which time he participated in interscholastic wrestling, football and track.
As a teen, Flair took a summer job as a lifeguard at a local pool in Minnesota. He received his first exposure to the wrestling business when he met the legendary Vachon brothers. In both 1966 and 1968, Flair won the state private school wrestling championship and was recruited to the University of Minnesota on a football scholarship, where he played alongside Greg Gagne, the son of Verne Gagne. Flair dropped out of college before receiving his degree, and he then worked as a bouncer at a nearby club, where he met Olympic weightlifter Ken Patera, who was preparing for a ring career at Verne Gagne's wrestling school. Patera introduced Flair to Verne Gagne, who agreed to take him on as a member of his training class.
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