AEW star Ryan Nemeth recently appeared on the Drop The Mic podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including how he believes the actor who played “The Nature Boy” Ric Flair in the “Iron Claw” film did a great job despite the heavy criticism as no one was truly going to be happy unless it was the real Nature Boy since it’s nearly impossible to replicate him.
Nemeth said, “I told this to Sean [Sean Durkin], the director, this, in my opinion, from anything I’ve seen, is the greatest depiction of pro wrestling ever on film. People can have opinions whether they like the movie or not, but wrestling has never been this perfectly depicted in a movie, and I stand by that. Maybe someday that’ll change and something will come along and do it better, but so far, this is the one. People like Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes, more Ric Flair because he’s still around and is still everywhere in pop culture. They have iconic personalities and they kind of transcend wrestling. I imagine a lot of people don’t know Ric Flair is a wrestler, they just know him from popping up everywhere and pop culture. A few people I’ve talked to have said the actor portraying Ric Flair in the movie, ‘Well, you know, it’s not exactly Ric Flair.’ I think, yeah, it’s a movie. He’s around; you see him on Instagram and posting. I think the actor did a brilliant job portraying and capturing the character at the moment he was NWA Champion. Every one of these actors have taken a person, who for the most part isn’t around anymore, and captured and embodied them and they all did brilliant work. Someone gave me a hard time, ‘that’s not really like Ric Flair.’ I just thought, you’re not going to be happy unless it’s literally Ric Flair. It’s your mind doing that to you. He did a great job.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
