Sean Waltman On Why He Slapped Ric Flair In WCW

Sean Waltman has had a long career in the professional wrestling industry, and during the 90s he spent time working for both WWE and WCW. Waltman worked with some of the top names in the industry, but back in the day he felt that he had to fight to earn respect.

Waltman recently appeared on The Tomorrow Show With Kevin Undergaro, and he recalled a segment from his WCW days where he slapped Ric Flair.

“When I was in WCW I was definitely like … kind of cutthroat, a little bit. Just kind of like, just like the way I was with [Ric] Flair. Flair’s still hot at me for slapping him. He came in the ring after the RAW thing and he mentioned twice about me slapping him. We had a segment on Nitro after our big six-man and you know, he’s a much better talker than me… when we were kind of squared off, Mean Gene was holding the mic, so I kind of bowed up to him and we were on live TV, and when he shoved me like he wasn’t supposed to shove me, he wasn’t supposed to put his hands on me, and when he did, I smacked the s–t out of him. One nice good one, then he kind of chased me around a little bit and I just kind of just danced around him. ’97, ’96 something like that.”

According to Waltman, Flair still brings the slap up, and he recently brought it up at the big Raw 25th anniversary show. While talking about why he slapped Flair in the first place, Waltman said that he felt it was what he had to do at the time.

“[At RAW 25, Flair] was putting me over too, but he still had to bring up the ‘hey you slapped me back in the day’ and then once again he said it twice in the ring. Ya the mic ya ya, and I was disrespectful, but honestly at the time, that’s what I had to do. I had to be that way. If I wasn’t that way I would not have gotten where I was in that company at that time, it’s just how it was. They try to hold you down and you try to put them out of their misery.”