3. Ric Flair Says He Knew From the Get-Go That Shawn Michaels Was Going To Be a Huge Star, How Evolution Was Formed
During a recent edition of the WOOOOO! Nation podcast, 2 time WWE Hall of Famer Ric Flair discussed Shawn Michaels rise to the top of the mountain. Below is what Flair had to say:
“I knew had something special in him. 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.”
Flair had the following to say about the formation of Evolution during the WWE Ruthless Aggression Era:
“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.”
