All right here we go...
It's summer of 1980 (yes nineteen-eighty) and I am still living in my "hometown" of Winston-Salem, NC. It's a Saturday night and earlier in the evening at the Winston-Salem Memorial Coliseum Ric Flair has battled Chief Wahoo McDaniels for the MACW belt. Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. Back then Flair was ALWAYS a heal aka a bad guy and Chief Wahoo McDaniels was always a babyface aka a good guy. We did not attend the matches.
We were however at a bar very close to the venue, The Safari Room. Also, remember that in 1980 you could drink alcohol when you were 18 years old in North Carolina. Me and my EIGHT friends were all either 18 or 19 years old.
Around 11:00-11:30pm we had all left the Safari Room and walked across the street to a Stop n' Go convenience store. A White Cadillac limo pulled into the parking lot. We were all walking across the parking lot, heading back towards the Safari Room...
...The limo driver opened the passenger door and Ric Flair got out. It was Ric and two girls, I believe. Flair and the limo driver were putting drinks into a cooler I seem to remember- so it was the driver, Ric Flair and two girls standing close together filling their cooler. We started yelling obscenities at Flair almost at once. He was a "bad guy" and nobody ever liked the bag guy way back then. There was NINE of us. Me and eight friends. All former High School wrestlers and/or football players and now home from college for summer.
Well for about five minutes we insulted Flair. He just smiled, gave us the finger but didn't seemed too concerned. Suddenly someone in my group said something about the girls Flair was with. I looked up and Flair was in a full sprint charging across the parking lot at all NINE of us. Remember in 1980 Flair was probably 28-30 years old and a legit bad ass. Here we go!
For some reason I was a few steps closer to Flair then my friends. I was not any tougher, I was just a little bit closer. I think I assumed a wrestling stance and was waiting for Flair to close the distance. Hell, ..."Three of us could shoot low, three could shoot high and three guys could stay close for back up, right? What could go wrong. There's NINE of us. Well...
...When Flair was about 15 feet away, I looked to my left... nobody was there. I looked to my right... nobody was there. All EIGHT of my friends were running away! They were all in full sprint running away! I was the only one there. I heard my friend Steve Peterson yell, "Run Tom run!!!" I turned to run... too late. Flair was on me.
to be continued...
