From one “Nature Boy” to another, celebrated author Tim Hornbaker has announced that he has the first true independent biography of Ric Flair coming out this fall.
It will be called The Last Real World Champion: The Legacy of “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, published by ECW Press, and will be released on September 12, 2023.
“I have kept this project under wraps for the past few years. I guess the cat is out of the bag,” Hornbaker told SlamWrestling.net in an email.
He has been working on it for more than three years.
“This book came on the heels of my Buddy Rogers book, and I went from working on the biography of one legendary and pioneering ‘Nature Boy’ into researching another. It was meant to be,” said Hornbaker, referring to Master of the Ring: The Biography of “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers, which was published in 2021 through CrowbarPress.com.
With two Flair autobiographies already out there — 2004’s Ric Flair: To Be The Man and 2017’s Second Nature: The Legacy of Ric Flair and the Rise of Charlotte with his daughter, Ashley “Charlotte” Flair — what will The Last Real World Champion bring to the table?
“Ric Flair is one of the most important professional wrestling figures of all-time. He is also one of the most discussed and critiqued personalities in the sport’s history. I thought it was time for a historian to present his full story from an independent point of view and put his achievements into the proper perspective,” said Hornbaker, adding that it is “a thoroughly researched and detailed biography on a true wrestling Hall of Famer. This book is comprehensively sourced with over 50 pages of endnotes.”
Flair is not involved in the project.
Tim Hornbaker.
Through the years, Flair has been stylin’ and profilin’, including with his stories, which don’t always add up for those who take the time to do the math.
“With regard to the various myths related to Flair, I did my best to clear up any misconceptions and controversies. That was a central priority for me, and I worked exhaustively to present the true facts,” said Hornbaker.
TOP PHOTO: Ric Flair at the 2023 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony, where he introduced inductee Keiji Muto / The Great Muta. WWE photo
RELATED LINKS
- Ric Flair and family story archive
- Oct. 22, 2018: Writing about wrestling’s history definitely Tim Hornbaker’s ‘territory’
- Tim Hornbaker’s Legacy of Wrestling website