Despite the financial success of the show, Flair looked like he barely survived it, and said on a podcast several days later that he became dehydrated and passed out twice. Coming off that success, Flair accompanied his son-in-law Andrade to Puerto Rico, where he seemed to be setting up another final match against 74-year-old Puerto Rican wrestling legend Carlos Colón. The recent pay-per-view built around the 73-year-old icon Ric Flair in a tag team bout billed as his final match drew 6,800 fans and approximately 25,000 PPV buys, both of which were the biggest indie wrestling numbers since All In in 2018.
They aren’t just battling against their opponents, but visibly fighting that universal battle against the passage of time. There is something really compelling about watching older wrestlers strap up and get into the ring. I want to talk about the rise of the wrestling gerontocracy-40 is the new 30, and maybe 60 is the new 40. I am not here to talk about spry 40-year-olds, though. Today, AJ Styles is 45, Rey Mysterio is 47, and both are seemingly still close to their athletic peaks-hell, AEW’s Bobby Fish is 45 and still being booked as part of a young, hip stable, and Chris Jericho is 51 still having classic, bloody world title matches. Fans mocked the 1997 WCW cage match between Roddy Piper and Hulk Hogan at Halloween Havoc as “Age in the Cage,” but Piper was 43 and Hogan was 44. With advances in medical and training science, wrestlers can perform at higher levels at older ages than before.
Wrestling is a mix of athletics and theater, and the theater aspect of it has always allowed wrestlers to push their careers well past the point when a pure athlete would have hung it up.
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