You may have seen the belt on Around the Horn this week. Yup, that says “Bo Jones.”

Aside for the obvious answer — I’m all about that good SSP — there’s a reason I decided to break out the Big Gold Belt. Save, of course, for the fact that I’ve always wanted to have the Big Gold Belt, especially with my name on it.

The moral of the story: Ric Flair brings people together.

Sounds crazy to some, but I want you to really think about this: how many cats do you know that are so beloved by people in disparate walks of life like Ric Flair? To us hip-hoppers, he’s the original stunna. To the country boys, he’s one of the few all-around pimptastic characters that sounds just like them.

Look at that suit. The shades. And he just drills every single line. He’s quite possibly the baddest man on planet Earth.

And those that don’t like him? Well, we’ve got a word for you: communists.

When I did local radio here in the Triangle, we had a lot of people that thought I was a racist. Of course, that’s simply code for “black,” which really isn’t what a lot of people were used to having in their sports talk. So one day, this cat calls up and goes on this rant about how I’m a racist and how sick he was of hearing my crap every day — I’m guessing his radio knob was broken — and blahblahblahblahblah. I’d gotten used to it by that point, so I wasn’t incredulous or anything. Annoyed, but that’s about all I had.

The next day, I had the Nature Boy on as a guest. Immediately after Flair was done, the dude called and talked to Stangl, my producer.

“I didn’t know Bomani was a Ric Flair fan. Now that I know that, he’s all right with me.”

I’m not lying. It was that simple, and that story isn’t unique. When we’d do remotes and Flair would show up, I was absolutely blown away by the range of people that would show up. I mean, we had cats showing up in expensive suits, who flew straight from work to a restaurant to meet Flair. We had their wives trying not to act so excited. Folks coming in from Durham AND from Johnston County.

Different things to all those people, but they’re probably like me and my boys from the old job. Shannon and I once were looking for Flair sounds to add to our intro music, and next thing we knew, we’d spent about 2 hours just running through clips. Sales guys were stopping by to join us and, in some cases, pulling up their pictures from college of how they and their homies dressed up like the Four Horsemen for Halloween. Complete with robes, mind you. Complete with robes.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the power of Ric Flair. So, I figured Flair was something we could all appreciate. At least those of us that aren’t lames.

So yeah, that’s why I got the belt…because Naitch is something we can all agree on.