Conrad Thompson recently appeared on Jeff Jarrett’s podcast, “My World,” for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling. During the discussion, Thompson talked about how the “Ric Flair’s Last Match” event was put together:
“What we were able to put together was with a lot of cooperation. I want to give a ton of credit and props and kudos to Tony Khan for allowing, really, the forbidden door to happen. Also, Vince McMahon. You know, we’re not supposed to talk about it, but we’re gonna say it one time. We had an AEW superstar tag-teaming with a WWE special Vice President to take on an AEW superstar and Ric Flair. That shouldn’t have happened. There’s a lot of reasons that it shouldn’t have happened.”
“It couldn’t happen without Tony Kahn. It couldn’t happen without Vince McMahon and now let’s give flowers to everybody else. The minute I called Court Bauer and said, ‘Hey, I got an idea for Starrcast’, he cut me off and said, ‘We’re in.’ I said, ‘Well, let me at least pitch the idea. We’re gonna do matches.’ He goes, ‘Okay, we’re in for that too’, just immediate. I mean, he was such a great citizen in the wrestling space and a great partner in this and supported it and any of our crazy ideas.”
“The exact same conversation with Scott D’Amore. Scott D’Amore at Impact Wrestling over delivered in a way that we can’t properly thank them or communicate well enough here. They ran down the entire match card on their TV program two days before. On their go home TV, they treated it like it was their go home TV, and it was for our show. They ran Ric Flair moments of the week for the whole month building into it. I didn’t ask for it. Neither one. They just offered and did it because they were fantastic partners. They couldn’t be more accommodating, and as that wasn’t enough, they brought their whole freaking production crew, all of them, to help pull the show off. So if you were impressed with the way it was put together, I would say it was 85-90% Impact Wrestling just doing what they do, and boy did they allow us to do some really cool stuff with Josh Alexander and Jacob Fatu, with the ladies three way for the title, with the Motor City Machine Guns of course taking on the American Wolves, and storyline wise, that even upset some of the stuff they were doing. But they put all that aside for Ric Flair and to support this event. Impact Wrestling deserves flowers for days.”
“My God, could those AAA guys steal the show any harder? Dorian set forth his absolute best. Konnan recommended it, and buddy, it delivered in spades.”
Thompson talked about The Undertaker sitting in the front row during Ric Flair’s last match:
“When we heard he was coming, I was like, ‘Buddy, even if he does come here, he’s not going to use these front row seats’ ‘Wow, okay, cool, man.’ By the way, when he showed up, my phone blew up. It was like, I thought something happened to my kid because everybody was texting, but it said, ‘The Undertaker’s here’. Hats off to my man, Mark. Man, you want to talk about respect. When the real deal godfather of wrestling comes out and sits shoulder to shoulder with Bret Hart, unbelievable.”
He described the angle in the parking lot when Jay Lethal and Jeff Jarrett attacked Ric Flair:
“When the physicality started, it was, ‘Give me your shoe. Give me your shoe.’ Okay, that’s all exactly as we discussed. Then when he yells, ‘It’s hardway guys’, I’m thinking, ‘I just saw him prepare, what happened?’ Lord, this is not PC, but that’s the first time I ever saw a black dude turn white. Jay Lethal was fuc*ing shook, because Jay Lethal backs up, raises his hands, and goes, ‘I think we should stop guys.’ and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, fu*k, something really bad happened’, and you (Jeff Jarrett) don’t give a damn. You keep going. Karen doesn’t give a damn and holds him back. Jay is nowhere around.”
“If you go back and you watch the tape, and we’ll probably release the unedited one day, when Jay comes back around and realizes you haven’t slowed down, he knows he’s supposed to be beating him up. But it’s one of his real life best friends who has yelled, ‘It’s a hardway guys.’ So he sees the blood coming out and he comes back and realizes ‘Alright, well, I guess we’re still going’, and doesn’t kick him in the head, doesn’t kick him anywhere in the upper body, he just kicks him in the shin.”
“Afterwards, Jay was like, ‘I’ve never seen or been a part of anything like this.’ But in between time, once it’s done and I feel like okay, cameras are down, everything’s fine. I jumped down and I’m like, ‘Ric, are you okay?’ because he was bleeding way more than we imagined, way more than any of us could have expected. I said, ‘Are you okay?’ As I’m approaching him, he’s walking and he goes, ‘I’m fine’, and he pretended to faint and I pretended to catch him, and he’s just howling with laughter. I’m like, ‘Okay, this motherfu*ker. He’s in his element. He loved it.'”
Conrad also commented on promoting wrestling:
“You (Jeff Jarrett) and I talked about this over a year ago. I said ‘No, I’m not doing wrestling. I’m not promoting wrestling. I’m not negotiating, I don’t want to be involved in the politics. I like my lane.’ But this opportunity presented itself. The real story that we’re not talking about, we will tell you one day, but this is part of a bigger master plan. No, it does not involve Ric Flair wrestling again, but the entrepreneur’s brain kicked off and I saw an opportunity for Sunday, and I said, ‘If I don’t do it, I’ll wonder, what if? so let’s do it.’ We rolled the dice and I couldn’t be more tickled with the results.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
