Former England cricket all-rounder Andrew Flintoff nearly transitioned to professional wrestling after his cricket career ended. He was in negotiations with World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and came close to signing a contract for a match against The Undertaker.After retiring from cricket, Flintoff explored various career options when he received broadcasting opportunities and discovered WWE as a potential path.
“I just hid for a bit and started to wonder, ‘What am I going to do now?’ Some of the TV offers started to come, which was never the plan – I stumbled into that,” Flintoff told The Overlap’s “Stick to Cricket” podcast. “I nearly joined the WWE, I didn’t want to box, that was never the plan. I would have been called ‘Big Fred'”Go Beyond The Boundary with our YouTube channel. SUBSCRIBE NOW!“What happened was, it got to a point in Dubai where I was unfit, I’d put on weight and was just not in a good place. I wanted to get fit again, but I needed motivation. As a kid, I loved WWE, so I came up with this idea, because I was doing League of Their Own with Sky, to fight the Undertaker in Manchester”Flintoff’s idea reached WWE co-founder Vince McMahon, leading to direct communications between them. He began training for a potential showdown with The Undertaker in Manchester.“I wrote this treatment up and presented the idea to Sky, it started gathering momentum and next minute it’s being passed onto WWE. I was in contact with the WWE, Vince McMahon”“Dave Roberts, who was a physiotherapist and lived with us (England cricket team) throughout my career, lived with us and looked after us. I asked him to send a trainer over to Dubai for six weeks because I needed to bulk up. He sent this fella over, I trained my nuts off, got fit and then the WWE flew me to Tampa. Me and the missus have gone over to Tampa, I’ve got two weeks at wrestling academy.”
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The reality of professional wrestling training proved to be physically demanding for Flintoff.“They fly us over business class, next morning we get in the car and go to WWE’s academy, two massive units all branded. We’re sitting in the car and these things are walking past me, like 6ft 8in monsters,” Flintoff continued.“So I go in and we do the warm-ups, then they put me in the ring for three hours and I just ran the ropes, I’d run into someone and they’d throw me. The second day I went in there, I had lashes all down my back and my missus said, ‘Are you alright with this?’ I was sore and thought something’s not right here. I said to this physio, ‘I think I’m having a back spasm,’ so they’re all like, ‘Oh! The English lad has got a back spasm,’ so they put me on the couch, he’s pushing me and I can feel my ribs separating”WWE offered Flintoff a three-year contract with opportunities to perform at major events like WrestleMania and Royal Rumble within 18 months.“The money was obscene, but we (family) wanted to move back from Dubai. The kids wanted to play cricket and didn’t want to go to America, so I just changed it to boxing and had a fight instead,” he admitted.Despite the lucrative offer, Flintoff ultimately chose to pursue boxing and return to the UK with his family instead of accepting the WWE contract.
