Ric Flair spoke with TMZ about Hulk Hogan in the minutes after the wrestling legend's death ... and he got super emotional remembering his good friend.
00:00Rick, first of all, I am so, so sorry this must hit you profoundly.
00:07More than I'll ever know.
00:15People always wanted to paint us as enemies, but we were actually very, very close friends.
00:25And we kept up with each other on a regular basis.
00:32I just talked to Jimmy Hart yesterday and he was fine.
00:37To have this happen is just horrible.
00:42How did you get the news?
00:44I'm so sorry, Rick. I am so sorry.
00:47Oh, I got it from everybody. My phone won't stop.
00:52And that's a good thing because everybody is saying something nice when social media can be so cruel.
01:01In this case, everybody is saying something nice.
01:05So, you know, I knew him over the years, but not like...
01:11He loved me. He loved you, Harvey.
01:13I really had a connection with this guy.
01:17I'm wondering what he meant to you.
01:20I want to hear your connection to him.
01:23Well, we had a...
01:25We had magic. I mean, it wasn't like me and Steamboat.
01:29But we just had a chemistry that was, I felt like, equal to me and Steamboat, but in a different way.
01:40And he was so over.
01:43I mean, when I went there in the 90s, I had never seen anything like it in my life.
01:48The music started and he came down the hallway.
01:52I mean, I would get him down for two minutes and we'd have...
01:57It's just an unbelievable relationship, Harvey.
02:00And I'll give you an idea of how much fun we had working together.
02:05If we were doing a dark match after TV, we would go and he'd say, room service, and throw me in and give me the boot, drop the big leg at me.
02:17We got back in a hotel for room service.
02:20I mean, that's how much fun we had working together.
02:24So, you guys were rivals in the ring.
02:29And I'm so curious about this.
02:32Was there ever... Did that ever kind of bleed out into real life?
02:37Or were you always secretly friends?
02:40Always friends. Always friends.
02:43I'd probably be remiss to say I wasn't jealous that he was making so much more money than me.
02:50But, you know, it had nothing to do with him.
02:54It's just, you know, I'm not going to bring up his name.
02:57The promotion just put me in a bad spot, but not with him ever.
03:03Are you kidding? I loved him.
03:04And everywhere we went, we drew money.
03:07It's just...
03:09We had a connection.
03:11And since then, we've done signings together, like the hard rocks.
03:17And I keep up with him.
03:19I've been out to his bar for karaoke.
03:21And, I mean, it just...
03:24You know, everybody wants to take a shot at Hulk, but he doesn't deserve it.
03:28You know, people make mistakes.
03:31And, you know, who knows how that happened.
03:35But, you know, it just...
03:39It's unfair to judge anybody by...
03:42You know, I mean, who would I be to judge anybody?
03:46I mean, really, who is anybody that's a celebrity to judge anybody?
03:52We've all made mistakes.
03:54So, you know, I've talked to him over the years, and, you know, about his ups, of which there were many, and his downs, of which there were definitely some.
04:05Where was he at the end of his life, in terms of his head?
04:11Where was Hulk Hogan, Terry Boyd?
04:15Well, I think he was doing great in it, but there's people that just, you know, they take shots at Hulk, and they, you know, they want to blame him for being protective of his position.
04:31But they don't, the young guys don't understand that back in the 80s, you didn't, you didn't, it wasn't as political as it is now, but you had to fight for your position.
04:43I mean, not fist fight, but in some cases, even fist fight.
04:46But, because everybody wanted to be you.
04:49Does that make sense?
04:50It does.
04:51And you mentioned being political.
04:53He, he was political.
04:55I mean, he was, I believe, the star of the Republican National Convention last year.
05:01And that, look, it's, we're a 50-50 country, divided.
05:06And he paid a price for that, even when he showed up in the ring.
05:11Yeah, well, you know what, one thing about Hulk, and I, I've never forgotten, he used to say to me,
05:19it's about, it's not about who's the best worker, it's about who makes the most money.
05:27I hated that saying.
05:30Well, what's interesting about that saying is that kind of applied to your relationship with him,
05:37that he made a lot more money than you, and that's what mattered to him, yet you never showed jealousy toward him.
05:44No, well, I couldn't, I wasn't mad at him, I was mad at the promotion.
05:49I'm not going to bring up any names, because now it's not a time to blame anybody.
05:53But, you know, he, he, he, with me, he knew that I wanted to work with him,
05:59because that meant I was on top, and we had some fantastic dealings.
06:05The match with Shaquille O'Neal as special referee, and then the Halloween Havoc were Tommy Hearns, Muhammad Ali, Sherry Martel.
06:16I mean, they're never going to be called classics, but they drew money, and we, we drew money.
06:24And he, he, I, the one thing that I, I said it publicly at the garden one night, my son went to six rehabs, and he never, he, he, I, my insurance didn't cover rehab.
06:43So, Hulk lent me money one time to, to, to, to keep him in rehab, and to keep him off life support.
06:51So, I've never forgotten that.
06:54And I went to pay him back, and he said, you never have to pay me back, I'm here for you.
06:59Wow.
07:00And then when I was, when I was dying in the hospital, I don't remember, but he was the first one there.
07:06So, how, how, how, how do you forget things like that?
07:11So, um, this is, um, you know, an hour after we broke the news.
07:18So, maybe it's too early, but I'm going to try.
07:20Um, he was a complicated man.
07:23Um, what do you think his legacy is?
07:26His legacy is, he's arguably, along with Steve Austin, the biggest star in the history of wrestling.
07:34Uh, for his generation, for his generations, he was light years ahead of me.
07:41I, I used to go ahead, go back to Minneapolis to see my mom and dad, and they weren't part of the NWA.
07:49And it's one of the greatest things I ever, ever.
07:52My dad would say to me, everybody knows who Hulk Hogan is.
07:56They don't know you.
07:58Okay, dad.
08:00Well, that's, that's not true.
08:02No.
08:03No, no.
08:04In Minneapolis, we didn't go there, you know.
08:06And, I mean, he just, we met up on the road, and what we did, we always partied and had fun.
08:12And, you know, we competed.
08:15But the one thing that was, for sure factors, the building was full.
08:23And we had fun.
08:25You know, we didn't talk about it for three hours.
08:30We, we knew what, we knew what we were going to do, because we felt it.
08:34I get it.
08:35Rick, look, I know this was really hard to come on this soon after, uh, the announcement.
08:41But we so appreciate it, and again, at least from me and from TMZ, our deepest condolences.
08:47Well, thank you.
08:48You know, I just, I hope everybody just stands up and says, man, Hulk, you're the greatest.
08:57He made a lot of people a lot of money.
09:00That he did.
09:01Not, not just the promotion.
09:03He made a lot of people a lot of money.
09:06I can remember when he was working with Kamala.
09:09And Kamala wasn't getting paid right.
09:12And he went, he went to Vince and said, Kamala needs more money.
09:17I mean, he had a good heart.
09:20Too good.
09:22Justisation and деся Corrections.
09:23That was a skin belt.
09:25So, does it make a lot of money every day ever came from Sydney Waarliga from Iraq?
09:26The second thing...
09:27Can you hear about Kelly Hormley?
09:29Oh, it's good.
09:30And don't be heard of it.
09:31It's- you may have, if it isn't, it's life.
09:32If...
09:33If there's a solution for You Anna.
09:34And the last thing...
09:35Here's the community in the past.
09:36This is so core was over, there's no care for us and we didn't have a bet
09:38But it and we just got Journey for you.
09:39And then, we got one good.
09:41We did two sides we gave them, and we got to see.
