Alexander Tamargo/Getty ImagesRic Flair has been hospitalized after suffering a medical emergency again.
The 70-year-old WWE Hall of Famer, one of the most popular wrestlers of all time and also known as the "Nature Boy," was rushed to an ER in the Atlanta area.
"Due to ongoing health complications, Ric was taken to the hospital and is expected to undergo a procedure tomorrow morning, after which he expects to fully recover," Ric's wife Wendy Barlow said in a statement to E! News.
Ric, who was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame individually in 2008 and again as a member of the famed "Four Horsemen" in 2012, has been hospitalized for major health issues twice in the past two years.
In 2017, Ric was placed in a medically induced coma for 10 days and underwent surgery to have a pacemaker installed. He was also given a colostomy bag for six months.
He said on ESPN's The Dan Le Batard Show, "I had eaten some raw oysters and I told [my then fiancée, now wife] Wendy I didn't feel right. She took me to the hospital on the 11th of August and by the 14th I was on life support. They told my kids that everything had shut down—kidney failure, congestive heart failure, everything shut down. The joke was, with the doctors, that the only thing that was alive and kicking, sitting at the bar waiting for me, was my liver."
"My daughters told me that [the doctor] said to go in and say goodbye to your daddy, he's not going to make it," he added.
The event followed years of alcohol abuse by the star. He told People after he was released from hospital, "I didn't think I was an alcoholic, but obviously I was," adding, "I'll never drink again. I never want to go through this again."
After that medical scare, Ric posted on Instagram a video of him wearing a T-shirt that reads, "I Ain't Dead Yet M F***ers."
"Hey, to all my fans out there, let it be known worldwide that NB—wooooo!—is back up and running. I want to tell all my fans out there, thank you do all the love and support and I will see you in the very, very, very, very, very, very near future. Wooooo!" he said, using his catchphrase.
In 2018, the pro-wrestling icon underwent successful intestinal surgery. At the time, his daughter and fellow WWE star Charlotte Flair, one of his four children, told WWE.com that the procedure was rooted in the health issues her dad experienced the previous fall.
"While some may have assumed that the effects may have slowed down my father's lifestyle, he really embraced it all, has ended up doing more work in the last couple months than in the previous few years and is enjoying life," Charlotte said. "However, when he was told that he had the opportunity to possibly reverse some of the effects of the initial surgery, my father decided it was something he wanted to try, and he was very positive about the procedure."
About two hours before it was reported that Ric was hospitalized again, an old photo of him in the ring with late wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, who died in 2015, was posted on his social media for Throwback Thursday.