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Tribune News Service
Tribune News Service
Entertainment
Kate Feldman

Ric Flair sets ‘last match,’ 14 years after WWE retirement

Ric Flair is saying goodbye to the wrestling ring — again.

The 73-year-old two-time WWE Hall of Famer has booked the lineup for what he says is going to be his “last match” ever, even though fans have heard that one before.

Flair is teaming up with son-in-law Andrade El Idolo, the AEW wrestler who married his daughter Charlotte in May, to fight Jeff Jarrett and Jay Lethal, he announced Monday.

“I’m going to walk that aisle, one last time to prove once and for all, that to be the Man, you’ve got to beat the Man,” he said in a statement.

The 16-time World Heavyweight Champion even went directly after WWE’s weekly show “Raw,” where Jarrett, who has been training with Flair for months, is an executive.

The show comes more than a decade after Flair’s 2008 Wrestlemania retirement, when he was bested in the ring by Shawn Michaels. Flair never wrestled with WWE again, but has continued popping up on the indie circuit and appearing live on “Raw” and “Smackdown.”

Last fall, two flight attendants accused him of sexual assault in 2002 on an episode of Vice’s “Dark Side of the Ring” docuseries titled “The Plane Ride From Hell.” Flair denied the assault but admitted to drunkenly swinging his genitals around on the plane in a move he called the “helicopter.”

Flair and Andrade will square off against Jarrett and Lethal on July 31 in Nashville, Tennessee, streamed on FITE TV.

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