CHARLOTTE, N.C. — In 1996, Carolina Panthers star linebacker Kevin Greene and pro wrestler Ric Flair had some of the greatest wrestling matches you’ve never heard of at a now-shuttered Charlotte restaurant called SouthEnd Brewery.
Greene died unexpectedly Monday at age 58. No cause of death has yet been announced.
“We were close enough that he would come for Christmas dinner,” Flair said somberly when we talked Tuesday over the phone about Greene. The two men lived a block away for several years in the Piper Glen area of south Charlotte.
All of Greene’s friends — and there were hundreds — have great Kevin Greene stories. This column is devoted to a few of those tales as we remember a player with a larger-than-life personality and a relentless drive that pushed him into the Pro Football Hall of Fame and to No. 3 all-time on the NFL sack list. Let’s begin with Greene and one of the most famous pro wrestlers ever, scuffling on SouthEnd Brewery’s floor.
Flair and Greene, both golden-haired showmen and by then close friends, developed a routine on Sunday nights after home games in 1996, the wrestler said. SouthEnd Brewery at the time was partly owned by then-Panthers president Mark Richardson, and the restaurant/bar less than two miles from Bank of America Stadium had become a magnet for the team's players.
“Back in that time, SouthEnd Brewery was the place to be if you could get in after home games,” Flair said.
Greene and his wife, Tara, would usually arrive first. Later, Flair would slam open the brewery door himself, often yelling his signature “Whooooo!” to announce his arrival.
“And Kevin would pretend to take offense at that, or something else,” said Wesley Walls, the former Panthers tight end who was a regular at those Sunday night gatherings, along with quarterback Kerry Collins and numerous other Carolina players. “He’d say something to Ric about being quiet, and Ric would say something back, and we’d have a verbal altercation. And then before long there was a shove, and not long after that it looked like they were in an absolute brawl.”
“We would just roll around,” Flair said, “wrestling on the ground like we’re having a real wrestling match. Just entertaining everybody.”
For those who were there every Sunday night after Panthers home-game wins — and Carolina went 9-0 at home that season, including the playoffs — it was just fun to watch. For the occasional guests, it was somewhat horrifying, as Flair and Greene barely dodged tables and knocked over the occasional drink during their scuffles.
“Yeah, it was fake,” Walls said. “But it looked real, every single week.”
And oddly enough, Flair said, it was Greene who he had to keep under check during those fake fights. Greene would sometimes get into a pass-rushing stance and just explode into Flair, who was trying to keep things tamped down to a reasonable level.
“He was a lot, man,” Flair said, chuckling. “He was a handful. Yeah, he didn’t get that slowing down part of it at all.”
Flair and Greene would eventually share the ring in a couple of pro wrestling exhibitions, always fighting against each other in tag-team matches. Greene moved to Destin, Fla., and longtime Charlottean Flair has lived in the Atlanta area since about 2013, but they remained good friends. Flair kept talking about Greene in the present tense as we spoke.
When Flair nearly died in 2017 and was put into a medically-induced coma, Greene sent Flair’s wife, Wendy, a photo of the two men in the ring from the 1990s and wrote: “Show this to Nature Boy. I want some of his a-- when he comes back. Sackmaster gonna make the Naitch pay!!!!”
Flair still has the photo. “You find out who your friends are at a time like that,” Flair said. “Kevin was a friend. All he lived for was football and his family.”
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Lamar Lathon and Greene formed the Panthers’ “Salt and Pepper” pass-rushing tandem in 1996, combining for 28 sacks in one season. No Panther tandem has ever had a year like it since. The two men were close for the past 25 years after a rocky start.
“I didn’t like him when he first got here,” Lathon said. “I had been here for the Panthers’ first year, in 1995, and I was the top dog. But a friend of mine told me, ‘I don’t know what you’re woofing about; this guy is going to make you better.’ So I invited Kevin and Tara over for dinner.”
As the dinner progressed, the two men grew more relaxed. Then Greene told him, as Lathon recounted: “Hey listen, Lamar buddy, I don’t mean to be rude to you in your own home. But buddy, I’m going to lead this team in sacks. I always lead my team in sacks. Everywhere. Every time.”
Lathon took the statement as such a challenge that the two men bet $5,000 on it. “I said, ‘KG, I’m the man here!’” Lathon recalled. “I get paid more money than anyone else, and I’m going to have more sacks than anyone else.”
In their very first game together, Lathon had three sacks and Greene had two. But at the end of the season, Greene led not only the Panthers but the entire NFL with 14.5 sacks.
Lathon finished with 13.5 sacks, tied for No. 2 in the league. “I paid my $5,000 and I was happy to pay it,” Lathon said, laughing, “because that was the best year I ever had.”
The two were so jovial with each other by the end of the year that they dressed up as Santa Claus (with sacks, get it?) for The Charlotte Observer in 1996. And Lathon stayed close to Greene, speaking to him as recently as last Wednesday. They told each other they loved each other at the end of the call, as they always did.
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Walls, Carolina’s Pro Bowl tight end, thought so much of Greene that he got him to sign one of his No. 91 jerseys after Greene’s final game at Carolina in 1999 and put it on his wall in Charlotte, where it still hangs. Greene was always very proud that he was No. 1 all-time in the NFL among linebackers in sacks, and he signed the jersey: “Kevin Greene #91 All Time NFL Sack Leader - Linebacker.”
Walls was 6-foot-5 and 240 pounds, but he marveled at how Greene (6-3, 247) could never be moved off the line of scrimmage when he didn’t want to be.
“People always ask me about the toughest guy you ever played against, and my answer has always been Kevin Greene,” Wall said. “You couldn’t move him on a running play, and you couldn’t keep him out of the backfield on a pass play. I remember before every game in the warmups, we had to always run 3-4 plays against the defense. The first time I just barely tapped him, because we’re about to play a game and we’re on the same team, and he yells: ‘I need something, Walls! You’ve gotta give me something! Come off and hit me!’
“So I hit him a little harder, and that wasn’t enough. He screams at me again. So then I thought, ‘Yeah, I got something for you,’ and I really went after him on the last play. And he stuffed me, and then he head-butted me, and I’m walking into the locker room with something close to a concussion thinking now I’ve got to go play a game. The guy was unblockable. If I got through warmups against him, the rest of the day was going to be fine. Man, I loved him.”
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Winslow Oliver was a rookie tailback and punt returner for the 1996 Panthers. Only days ago he was texting with Greene, catching up and hoping to plan another trip to Destin, where Greene and his family lived. The two also sometimes spoke about their strong Christian faith.
In 1996, though, Oliver was a lightning-fast running back who early in training camp was blowing by Greene in pass-coverage drills. Greene was 34 by that point and his forte had never been covering backs out of the backfield, which he rarely had to do in the Panthers’ 3-4 scheme.
“I was just killing him,” Oliver said. “And so Kevin told me to stop, to slow down a little. But one of the coaches heard it and winked at me like, ‘Yeah, keep doing it,’ and so I did. But then they blew the whistle and that was over and it was time for the blitz pickup drill. I went to the end of the line and hid, because I knew what was coming.
“But Kevin wasn’t having it. He called me out and made me get up against him, at the front, and he just pummeled me. The guy was a monster. No one could stop him. And then after all that, he grinned and said, ‘Next time, when I tell you to stop, you better stop.’ ”
Later, Greene bestowed a nickname on Oliver. “You’re not Win-SLOW,” he proclaimed. “You’re Wins-FAST. I’m calling you Winsfast from now on.”
As part of their last text exchange just a few days before Greene died, Oliver told Greene: “So glad we were teammates, Bro!”
Greene responded: “What a ride, huh, Winsfast?”
