Andrew Flintoff vs the Undertaker? It almost happened

Long before his Top Gear run, his boxing stint, and his time as a youth coach, Andrew Flintoff very nearly traded cricket whites for wrestling tights as "Big Fred". The England Ashes hero spoke on the Betfair Stick to Cricket podcast about the time he was offered a three-year contract by WWE, with a fast-track to WrestleMania and the Royal Rumble.

As Flintoff tells it, the journey began after a premature retirement left him unmoored. "I fell out of love with cricket. I genuinely thought my best years were ahead of me at 31. Especially as a bowler, I was bowling quicker, my batting was coming back and I was thinking the next three years are my years, but I never got that.

I couldn't be around it. When you retire, everything moves on and you're left behind."

He relocated with his family to Dubai, with plans to play in the IPL and BBL, but was left pondering his next career move. "I just hid for a bit and started to wonder 'What am I going to do now?'"

That's when TV opportunities began to come his way, and Flintoff decided to put himself out there - way out there. "As a kid, I loved WWE, so I came up with this idea to fight the Undertaker in Manchester! I wrote this treatment up and presented the idea to Sky… next minute it's being passed onto WWE. I was in contact with the WWE, Vince McMahon!"

Flintoff threw himself into training, flying to WWE's academy in Tampa, Florida, and sweating through brutal ring drills for two weeks: "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 all right with this?'"

He powered through serious pain, at one point telling the physiotherapist, "Mate, I think I've broken my ribs," to find himself in acting class on day three, in which he really hit his stride. "I looked out and there were all of these weird and wonderful-looking people, so I just tore them all a new one. They were trying to get me to wind up after two minutes but I was not finished."

Two weeks later, WWE made it official. "I got an email saying, 'You can't do your documentary [Flintoff, released this year] because you'll give the secrets away. We want to put you on a three-year contract. We'll fast-track you and in 18 months you'll be at WrestleMania and Royal Rumble.'"

But Flintoff walked away, despite the money being "obscene". His kids wanted to move back home and play cricket, not relocate to America, "so I just changed it to boxing and had a fight instead."

Flintoff's career has taken many strange and fateful turns, but perhaps none stranger had "Big Fred" entered the WWE ring. It's a what-if the world will have to live with.