the site of ric flair’s 1975 plane crash

On October 4, 1975, wrestling promoter David Crockett, along with four wrestlers, Ric Flair, Johnny Valentine, Tim Woods and Bobby Bruggers, boarded a twin-engine Cessna to fly from Charlotte to Wilmington, North Carolina for an outdoor wrestling show. This was before Ric Flair was 'The Nature Boy' when he was just a 24-year-old starting out in the business during his early NWA days as part of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling.

Because of the weight of the wrestlers, the pilot dumped fuel to lighten up. It was a tragic mistake, and the plane ran out of gas. They crashed just short of the Wilmington airport runway.

The pilot was the only one who died, although he survived in a coma for some time. Bruggers, Valentine and Flair all suffered broken backs. It ended the careers of Bruggers and Valentine, but Flair went through rehab and returned in six months to continue his feud with Wahoo McDaniel.

This was back in the days when all the marks still thought pro wrestling was real. The hospital staff panicked when Wahoo McDaniel, currently feuding with Flair, showed up at the hospital to visit him.

Johnny Valentine was in the middle of a feud with Tim Woods (aka Mr. Wrestling) at the time of the crash. The company feared that exposing the business as a work would be a catastrophe, and they went out of their way to make sure the public didn't know that the two had been traveling together. Woods was the only one to walk away from the crash, and he made some appearances shortly after to convince the fans he hadn't been on that plane, thus saving the reputation of the wrestling business forever.