Ric Flair sues agency over control of his identity rights

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Chatting with Stephanie McMahon on her What’s Your Story? podcast recently, Charlotte Flair said this about her father Ric’s often-ridiculed social media activity: “The amount that we fight about his social media, I cannot tell you — it is a daily thing. And then I’m like, ‘Why are you in all caps? Why are you yelling at me in your post?’ “… I comment sometimes. But if it’s really bad, I won’t comment because I don’t want to draw [attention to it]. Sometimes I just have to make a joke out of it, but if it’s really bad, I’m like — report, report, report… “I have to tell him daily, like that AI image is not real. He has sent me pictures of him and other people. And I’m like, that didn’t happen.” The Title Case (the technical name for The Nature Boy’s Style Of Capitalizing The First Letter Of Every Word) stuff is annoying, and we’ve definitely made our fair of jokes about Charlotte’s nutty, likely-intoxicated dad’s tweets. But the dark side of that is that millions of older people are taken advantage of online every day. Naitch may have been one of them already. Joe Rogan revealed in June that Ric had been at least pranked and possibly scammed over a second appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience that Flair had been promoting. And now The Independent reports that Ric is suing an outfit called FAM Networks for $10 million claiming FAM defrauded him of his digital rights to license his own image. The complaint The Independent’s Justin Rohrlich obtained calls FAM a “cutting-edge talent-first management agency and media company representing some of the most unique and impactful influencers around the world,” but Rohrlich writes: Messages sent to five different departments at FAM Networks were all returned as undeliverable. A contact form on the company’s website was inoperable on Tuesday; it does not have a publicly listed phone number. Ric alleges they taking control of his Facebook page, FAM has taken $250,000 in revenues from him. It’s the result of actions Flair’s complaint describes thusly: “What FAM did was simple: it waited until he needed help managing the digital legacy of everything he had built, presented him with a document he was not equipped to understand, told him he had lawyers when he did not, gave him fourteen minutes to read it, and walked away with a perpetual license to his identity.” The WWE Hall of Famer told The Independent he hopes to “bury” FAM. The complain should result in a trial for violations of New York Civil Rights Law, but no date has been set.