Details on how the “Ric Flair’s Last Match” event was put together

During Jeff Jarrett’s My World podcast, Conrad Thompson talked about how the “Ric Flair’s Last Match” event was put together…

“I want to give a ton of credit and props to kudos to Tony Khan for allowing, really, the Forbidden Door to happen. We’re not supposed to talk about it, but we’re going to say it one time. We had an AEW superstar teaming with a WWE Special Vice President to take on an AEW superstar and Ric Flair. That shouldn’t have happened. There are a lot of reasons that it shouldn’t have happened, but Vince McMahon, back when that was a thing, greenlit it and so did Tony Khan. This could not have happened without both of those folks allowing it. You and I [Jarrett] had this idea, I know there have been lots of rumors and innuendo ‘this wasn’t the first match.’ Listen, there were lots of ideas put together of ‘how can we do Ric Flair’s last match?’ When we settled on a story, it sort of clicked. The videos of Jay Lethal training with Ric had gone super viral, we have a built-in story there and we can build on it, but it doesn’t make sense for Jay to be his partner because they have been working against each other. In an effort to best take care of my father-in-law, let’s make sure the guy he’s wrestling that night is the guy he’s been wrestling four times a week since April.”

“It couldn’t have happened with Tony Khan. It couldn’t have happened without Vince McMahon. Now, let’s give flowers to everyone else. The minute I called Court Bauer and said, ‘I have an idea for Starrcast.’ He cut me off and said, ‘We’re in.’ I said, ‘Oh, okay. Let me at least pitch the idea. We’re going to do matches.’ ‘Okay, we’re in for that too.’ Just immediate. He was such a great citizen in the wrestling space and a great partner and supported it and any of our crazy ideas. ‘Yup, we’re in.’ The exact same conversation with Scott D’Amore. Scott D’Amore and IMPACT Wrestling over-delivered in a way that we can’t properly thank them or communicate well enough here. They ran down the entire match card on their TV program two days before. On their go-home TV, they treated it like it was their go-home TV. It was for our show. They ran Ric Flair Moment of the Week for a whole month building into it. I didn’t ask for it, they just offered and did it because they are fantastic partners. They helped us pull together and use footage of Ric and Jay and everybody. We aired that, no problem, couldn’t be more accommodating. As if that wasn’t enough, they brought their whole freakin production crew, all of them, to help pull the show off. If you were impressed with the way it was put together, it was 85-90 percent IMPACT Wrestling doing what they do. IMPACT Wrestling deserves flowers for days. Dorian (Roldan) sent four of his absolute best, Konnan reccommended it and buddy it delivered in spades. Me and you talked offline, sort of half-ass joking, some of those guys Independent rates probably went through the roof because of the performance they put on that night.'” (quotes courtesy of Fightful.com)