Conrad Thompson recently interviewed former WCW Executive Vice President Jim Herd for Ad Free Shows. During Herd’s regime, former world champion and face of the company, Ric Flair, was ultimately driven to WWF in 1991.
Jim Ross stated on his own Grilling JR podcast on how dealing with Jim Herd almost drove Flair insane. Ross also discussed how Herd wanted to revamp Flair’s gimmick from “The Nature Boy” to a gladiator-like gimmick where Flair would now call himself Spartacus. Herd addressed the topic on AdFreeShows. He admitted a lot of ideas were brainstormed for Flair, but he denied that the Spartacus gladiator gimmick was in consideration for “The Nature Boy”. He said,
“When you’re brainstorming those things, you get all kinds of feedback from those guys. That’s where the lie that I wanted to change Ric Flair’s name came from. That came from one of the meetings, but it was never considered. One of the things that was considered, and he didn’t like it so it became — there was a wrestler were going to call The Zodiac Man. Every match, at the end of the match, you could go out the door and they would throw these discs that were redeemable at fast food places. They would catch them and if you could prove you were a Leo after the match, you’d get another disc. It got so complicated, but his name was going to change every month with a different promotion. I think Ric heard we wanted him to be the Zodiac Man. It was just another lie that came out of those meetings. A lot of it was tongue in cheek in those meetings.”
Back in 1991, Ric Flair left WCW and signed with WWF. He even appeared on WWF programming with the “Big Gold” WCW World Heavyweight Championship belt.
The full interview between Herd and Thompson is available at the AdFreeShows Patreon.
