Brian Shields Talks ‘Second Nature’
Ric Flair and Charlotte stressed they want their dual memoir to be “real.”
WrestleMania 34 will mark the 10-year anniversary of Ric Flair’s retirement in WWE, a magical time for wrestling fans that has been chronicled in Second Nature, the dual memoir of Ric and his daughter Charlotte. Published last year, the Flair family memoir (co-written by Brian Shields) is the most emotional wrestling book since Jeanie Clark’s “Through The Shattered Glass.” Hell, it may even surpass it.
It’s the unbelievably heartbreaking saga of pro wrestling royalty, yet it’s also relatable to every family in America. Both Flairs should be commended on their brutal honesty, making readers feel like friends more than fans. Shields has several WWE publications to his credit (“30 Years of WrestleMania,” “WWE Encyclopedia”), but this is his finest work; translating their inner turmoil and angst into an eloquent, inspirational and captivating story of survival and redemption.
Shields recently stopped by Corrigan’s Corner on Team LeftJab Radio to discuss the two-year collaborative process with the Flairs and the overwhelming feedback they’ve all received.
The full, unedited conversation can be heard here.
A review of Second Nature can be found here.
You can follow Shields on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
From what I understand, you were there in Orlando for WrestleMania 24, right?
Brian Shields: “I was, I was. I have to back up very quickly and take a moment to thank all the fans, aka the WWE Universe and fans of the Flair family. Second Nature came out in September of last year and it has just been a great experience celebrating the release of the book. Ric and Charlotte are very grateful for all the support and the wonderful reviews whether they’re from consumers or members of the press or people posting online.
To your point, I can’t believe it’s been 10 years. Around this time in 2008, I was getting ready to pack for Orlando. I’ve been doing work for WWE for 20 years in a variety of capacities, whether it’s as a consumer products and marketing consultant or as a writer. I was actually at WrestleMania 24 for the incredible match with Shawn Michaels and in the building for his Hall of Fame speech. You know, people still talk about that retirement storyline like it just happened. It’s actually how Second Nature begins: Ric is back on WWE TV on Monday Night Raw from Charlotte and he’s in the ring with Mr. McMahon and Randy Orton comes out and that retirement storyline is established.
It’s unreal that it’s been 10 years since all of that. Charlotte at that point is in the audience just like everybody else, being caught up in the emotion of the entire WrestleMania week.”
Why did you decide to start the book at that point in his life?
Brian Shields: “First off, Ric had a first book. The original concept of Second Nature was to pick up where Ric’s career left off from the first book, and also celebrating the legacy of his career. You’re really getting several stories in one book. The most impactful was that storyline. That time period was very important for a lot of reasons for Ric.
The book is kind of book-ended, if you will, in Dallas for WrestleMania 32 when Ric and Charlotte arrived. It was very real when I got to talking and working with them. During that trip, they were thinking of their careers and the paths they took in their lives. When people read Second Nature, it’s a very real look into the lives personally and professionally of Ric and Charlotte.”
I’d go so far as to say it’s more real than it is about professional wrestling. There is a large chunk spent on Charlotte’s life before WWE, which is riveting and full of emotional events. When you were first assigned to this book, did you have any idea how heavy it would be?
Bran Shields: “Not at all, and that’s an understatement. In the fall of 2015, I was contacted by WWE and told there was a larger concept of doing a dual memoir with Ric and Charlotte. It was supposed to be as much Ric’s book as Charlotte’s, focusing on the legacy of Ric’s career and then taking people the rise of Charlotte. To me, there is a lot of wrestling in Charlotte’s part, it’s just toward the end of the story because her professional career as a WWE Superstar in comparison to her dad’s has not been that long. In order to learn who that incredible superstar is today, you have to go back to the beginning with her.
So that was the general idea and I was asked to come up with a concept for it. I presented it to WWE and I was told they were happy with the high concept treatment. Then I would be presenting that to Ric and Charlotte. If they liked it, we would go forward. I presented it to Ric first and he was very happy with it. I presented it to Charlotte shortly thereafter and we got to work right away.
One of the things I knew from the beginning is that they wanted the book to be a real look into their personal and professional lives, highs and lows, ups and downs. There are heartwarming things in the book, and there are heartbreaking things in the book. When you first hear that, you think, ‘great, let’s roll.’”
Right.
Brian Shields: “I had no idea just how real they wanted the book to be. Just to give you a quick idea, readers are going to learn just how much Ric really struggled with retiring and the fact that he was told he’d be retiring and that it wasn’t his choice. You go through his last two marriages which were very difficult for him and his family. You learn about his relationship with Hulk Hogan. Ric shares his thoughts for the first time publicly in a forum like this on the Benoit tragedy. He talks about his time in TNA and how difficult the decision to go there was.
I also want to point out that I had never met either one of them before. I knew a little bit about Charlotte in terms of her life as a top tier athlete as an NCAA Division-1 volleyball player. But I had never met them before and we worked on this as a team for two years.”
Were you a Ric Flair fan growing up?
Brian Shields: “Oh, absolutely. Any way I would answer that would be a huge understatement. I will say this, though, and I’ll give you a bit of an exclusive that I haven’t shared on other interviews. As a young kid, I despised the Horsemen because I always rooted for the good guys. Dusty Rhodes, Magnum T.A., the Road Warriors, after the Magnum T.A. tragedy, Nikita Koloff became a good guy.
But when I got to be a teenager, I thought this guy has it all. It’s amazing. I began to cheer and root for the Horsemen even though they were villains during that time period. For my ninth birthday, I’m from New York, and my mom asked me what I want. I told her that she needed to get tickets for Starrcade at the Greensboro Coliseum in North Carolina because Dusty Rhodes needed my help fighting the Four Horsemen. My mom was a very involved parent who knew what I was watching, but she didn’t expect this grandiose request coming from her nine-year-old son.”
Take me back to 10 years ago – What was it like being in the crowd for Flair’s final WWE match?
Brian Shields: “The whole weekend was incredibly moving. Once I landed in Orlando, and I remember this in such detail, you immediately had a feeling come over you. You get out of the plane, you walk through the terminal and then there’s that monorail that takes you from the terminal to baggage claim. From the moment I landed, I was overcome with this rush of excitement and energy. I was there to work but I couldn’t help but have this feeling like I grew up on my mother’s couch watching wrestling and I never imagined Ric Flair retiring. This storyline has been phenomenal. I remember several times throughout the match having the Four Horsemen sign up. It was very moving.
I grew up a sports fan and I played sports. Something hits you when the luminaries of the eras you grew up in, their careers are winding down. That’s something you get an idea of as you get a little older. You think back to so many incredible memories. I remember the first Ric Flair action figure was through Remco’s AWA line.”
(laughs) That’s a deep cut right there.
Brian Shields: “That came out 1983, 1984, right before the first line of WWF LJN figures came out. The first WCW video game came out on the original Nintendo in 1990 and the Road Warriors were on the cover. Ric was in the game and featured on the back of the box. There are different touchstones that play back through your life. It’s one of the reasons why so many wrestlers, especially the truly elite wrestlers at Ric and Charlotte’s level, have this incredible bond with their fans. Ric talked about this in the book: you’re in people’s homes every week. They feel they’ve grown up with you and that they know you.
You couldn’t not get caught up in the emotion of the match. Everybody wanted Ric to win. The irony of this guy who for most of his career was a hated villain, sure, he had his pocket of fans, but his career was defined by people paying to see him get his butt kicked and lose. Now you have over 80,000 people watching live and all they want to see is for him to win. Think about that.”
Oh, I’m thinking about it. Ric Flair is my favorite wrestler and aside from Mick Foley’s retirement match in 2000, I can’t think of anything else as emotional in my fandom.
Brian Shields: “You saw the outpouring of love from his colleagues and fans from all over the world. Charlotte says that until the Hall of Fame weekend in Orlando, I didn’t realize how much my dad meant to wrestling and the fans. In her section of the book, people are taken from the beginning, her growing up in Charlotte in the shadows of her famous father. You know, she took Randy “Macho Man” Savage to her school one day for show-and-tell. She spent early summers with Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, Kevin Sullivan and his wife at the time, Nancy. She was backstage at Starrcade 93 when Ric, in one of his most memorable performances, beat Vader that night. There are so many things that people will be taken through. It’s an incredible story because of Ric and Charlotte’s dedication to the project.”
Since you had never met him before, were you worried how Ric would react to working with you? In recent years, he hasn’t been complimentary of the co-author of his first book.
Brian Shields: “No, I wasn’t worried at all. I know my process in terms of working with people. I enjoyed Ric’s first book very much. As a fan, I wanted more because fans always want more. I loved the WWE 24 series on the WWE Network. After each one I’ve watched, I put my Apple remote down and I’m like damn, can we get 15 more minutes? That’s just me. So I didn’t really know anything about that, and I was just grateful that Ric and Charlotte wanted to collaborate. They could have easily said do this, this and this, and we’ll take a look and make notes. It could have every easily been tactical like that.
But they wanted to know what I thought and they wanted my ideas on things. As a writer, there is no greater gift than for somebody to tell you they want a collaboration. We became a three-person writing team. The process was excellent. They’re on the road over 300 days a year and have an incredible work ethic. If I ever needed anything, I could just pick up the phone or send a text or email. I’ve never been more proud of anything I’ve ever worked on in my 20-year career.”
Of all the different projects you’ve worked on with WWE, they were never as personal or on a one-on-one level like this, right?
Brian Shields: “Right. Second Nature is the seventh book in eleven years that I’ve written with WWE. The other books, which I’m very proud of, like the original WWE Encyclopedia debuted on The New York Times bestseller list and was there for five straight weeks. There is a different style of writing when you’re talking about something that’s almost a reference book than a flowing story. It’s a different style of writing, a different discipline. One is not better than the other because I’ve done both, but they are different.
I do feel like this is my best work, my best writing, and that was made possible because of Ric, Charlotte, the incredible team at St. Martin’s Press and I can’t say enough about WWE. You get everything you need as soon as you need it when you’re working with them.”
Charlotte has since said that she would journal her section of the book, and then go over it with you. Now there’s no way you got the Nature Boy to sit down with a journal, so was that process just you and him chatting?
Brian Shields: “(laughs) Yeah, everybody has their own style. With Charlotte, we figured about a month into it, that just speaking wasn’t working the way she wanted it to be. I mean, the Flair work ethic should be trademarked as a phrase. A lot of this personal stuff that we were talking about, she had never dealt with fully as a person, and then that was compounded by making it public in a book. She did a lot of journaling and we kept up our conversations.
With Ric, he was more a fluid stream of consciousness where we would have phenomenal conversations. We would talk in person or over the phone, and then for little minor questions, I would text him and he always gets back to you right away. There were many in-person meetings backstage at WWE events. A couple of them were together and then the rest were individually.”
Now I don’t want to give away the entire book, but we will talk about Reid.
Brian Shields: “Yes, you have to.”
How were you able to keep yourself composed when talking with them about his passing?
Brian Shields: “Well, when you’re working with people and you start talking about very sensitive topics, you have to do so with a certain level of compassion, sensitivity and empathy. One of the reasons why the book is so great is because of how great they were to work with. When you first meet them, you feel like you’ve known them forever. They’re very friendly and very easy to talk to. We also didn’t start at that point. By the time we got to Reid as a young adult battling addiction, we had been working together for quite some time and built a good rapport.
You learn in the book how great of a person he was. How loyal he was to his friends and family, how he loved working with children as a coach, his love of animals, movies and so many different things. One of the things you also learn is he fought valiantly against addiction and he really wanted to get better.”
As I mentioned in my review, Second Nature is a wonderful companion piece to ESPN’s 30 for 30: Nature Boy. What did you think of the documentary?
Brian Shields: “I thought it was incredible. Thanks to Ric, his fiancée Wendy and Charlotte, I was invited to the special screening in New York City before it came out. I thought it was excellent. It’s funny, I agree with you that the pieces seem to complement each other. Obviously, you can go into more detail in the book because the medium is different. I’m a big fan of the 30 for 30 series and in my opinion, it’s fitting that the first one ever done about a wrestler was for Ric Flair.”
“Second Nature: The Legacy of Ric Flair and the Rise of Charlotte” is available on Amazon.
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