Richard Morgan Fliehr isn't what you'd expect from a professional wrestler. A medical student at Minnesota University (his father was a doctor, his mother an actress), Flair dropped out college to train for the mat wars under legendary former AWA World champ Verne Gagne. He made his professional wrestling debut on December 10, 1972, wrestling "Scrap Iron" George Gadaski (real name: John Kosti) to a ten minute draw in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. After spending the first few months of his career with Gagne's Minneapolis Boxing & Wrestling Club (which used the brand name "American Wrestling Association"), Flair moved on to Charlotte, North Carolina where he became a regular for Jim Crockett Promotions (a member of the worldwide sanctioning body known as the National Wrestling Alliance) under the direction of matchmaker (wrestling terminology for writer) George Scott. In 1981, he captured his first NWA World title (he would hold that belt officially nine other times). Later on, he would work for both World Championship Wrestling (a company formed by Ted Turner after buying the wrestling assets of JCP) and Vince McMahon's World Wrestling Entertainment. He has been officially recognized as a World champion (an honor which generally signifies that a wrestler is the top attraction in any given company) 21 times, garnering recognition from the NWA, WWE, and WCW (as well as the WCW spin-off group WCWI, or World Championship Wrestling International). He is the only man in wrestling history to hold all four versions of the title.
