Wrestling Forward: Hating Charlotte Flair Is Passé

Today’s “Wrestling Forward” offers effusive praise to Charlotte Flair, examines Dean Ambrose’s strange booking on his way out from WWE, and shows ambivalence towards Ronda Rousey.

On the previous week’s episode of WWE Raw, Vince McMahon crashed the party to suspend Becky Lynch through WrestleMania and announce her most bitter rival, Charlotte Flair, as her replacement to face Ronda Rousey for the Raw Women’s Championship in ‘Mania 35’s main event.

The news was predictably met with anger, as Charlotte transitioned back into a role as a heel with fans incensed that Charlotte had been “shoehorned” in another one of Becky’s big matches. But given how important Charlotte has been to this story – she beat the hell out of Ronda Rousey at Survivor Series and was also screwed over by Rousey at TLC – as Becky’s longest rival, it’s hard to argue against her belonging in this match. Plus, she always shines in big matches, such as last year’s WrestleMania 34, streak-breaking win against Asuka.

As my colleague Trace Johnson recently wrote, past Triple Threat matches as crowning moments for popular babyfaces, namely Daniel Bryan at WrestleMania 30, have rarely felt cheapened.

Though I can certainly see why most fans would have preferred Becky vs. Ronda to a Triple Threat, the debate itself shouldn’t overshadow how Charlotte has quickly stepped her game this WrestleMania season.

In the ring, Charlotte has always been one of the best in the company, and I don’t think anyone had a more consistently great set of PPV performances in 2018 than Flair.

But because most of Charlotte’s big promo battles have come against literally the company’s best spoke and social media promo in Becky Lynch, her promotional work around those big matches has often felt lacking.

Clearly, we can’t use this convenient criticism anymore, because she’s been tremendous in the build-up to WrestleMania. Just look at these tweets:

https://twitter.com/MsCharlotteWWE/status/1097234969267789825

https://twitter.com/MsCharlotteWWE/status/1095203420196257792

What stands out to me the most about these tweets is the juxtaposition between how she tweets about the fans and how she tweets about her co-workers. Charlotte knows that many fans online will inherently resent her in the build to WrestleMania, simply because she’s one of Becky’s adversaries. She’s also well-aware of the criticisms that she prevents other women in the division from shining, and, quite frankly, those criticisms make little sense.

Because in wrestling, like everything else in life, the best way to help others is by pulling them up. Flair’s name helped her get in the door, yes, but she’s main evented Pay Per Views and had great matches on her own merit. And, as evidenced by her tweets putting over Ruby Riott and defending other wrestlers she’s worked with, she always goes the distance to make the people around her better with the platform she has.

It’s why hating on Charlotte Flair isn’t cool anymore. Bringing up her “privilege” usually leads to an incomplete argument, because criticisms against her often resort to simplistic ways of viewing when privilege becomes a problem. Charlotte does benefit from certain privileges (note: I do, too!), but, unlike a few others who are in the same boat, she goes above and beyond to help fans in the community and her co-workers, using her platform for good. Beyond that, being Ric Flair’s daughter doesn’t diminish her hard work as a wrestler, and anyone who disputes that is just looking for a fight; she is in her spot now because of the work she’s put in week-in and week-out.

Charlotte’s body positivity and messages of empowerment have long been overlooked by the fanbase, and it’s awesome to see that she’s still being a strong voice for positive on social media while still playing to a crowd’s animosity. A modern-day performer can manage to do both effectively, and it’s something many of her colleagues could learn from.

Though Becky is WWE’s top star right now, Charlotte has been one of WWE’s best performers for years, and it’s amazing how much she continues to add to her game. So I’d think twice before I call her “undeserving”, because hating on her – beyond good-natured “boo’s” when she’s a villain– is worn out.

This Is What They’re Doing With Dean Ambrose?

Dean Ambrose is set to leave WWE in April, and, in a few months, the wrestling world could be his to dominate. Ambrose is one of the most well-rounded performers in the world, though we’ve never quite seen the shackles lifted off of him in WWE.

That was supposed to change with his heel turn – one of the most callous turns in wrestling history – months ago, but WWE dropped the ball. It’s as simple as that.

And they’ve continued to dropped the ball with Ambrose since then.

I get that WWE doesn’t owe Ambrose anything now that it’s clear he intends to leave, but since he’s a decorated wrestler who’s had some of the most memorable feuds in recent memory (Triple H, Brock Lesnar besides the match itself, Seth Rollins, and AJ Styles and John Cena), you’d think that they’d use his name recognition to put someone over.

Nope.

Ambrose randomly turned babyface last week on Raw, and then this week, he lost to Drew McIntyre in rapid fashion.

Instead of this nonsense, we could have seen Ambrose put the finishing touches on his legacy in WWE (though a future return is always a possibility) with an intergender feud with Nia Jax. Or how about a WrestleMania match against a call-up like Aleister Black that makes Ambrose look good before putting over a rising star on the way out?

Or why not both?

But it looks like we’ll get neither. We’ll get WWE taking the “safe” (read: “boring”) route with Ambrose, because, well, he’s gone anyway, right?

Ambrose is a man who has given his body, his will, his everything to WWE over his career, and the lasting legacy they want to leave one of their most influential performers over the past decade is 50/50 booking, a shoddily booked turn, and a few squash matches. That’s par for the course for WWE, but it really shouldn’t be this way.

Ronda Rousey Has Helped, But Lana Has A Point

Lana made a very interesting tweet about Ronda Rousey last week that unsurprisingly made the rounds:

Harsh? Yes. But did Lana have a point? Sort of.

It’s funny looking back at this tweet with the context of Ruby Riott’s two-and-a-half minute match at the Elimination Chamber Pay Per View, wherein Ruby, who is one of the company’s most respected wrestlers and once took Charlotte Flair to the brink in a title match, went out with so much as a whimper. Worse yet, she lost in minutes after Rousey buried her in a pre-match promo. (At least this result was somewhat rectified by a main event match on Raw that lasted longer.)

Whereas Ruby, who has more respect for the wrestling business than her counterpart who inadvertently disses the sport as “fake”, did a much better job of hyping up what amounted to a disrespectful squash match.

How can we really say that Rousey has changed the game if she cuts promos insulting her colleagues (remember those offensive promos directed at Nikki Bella) and the sport? Like, Charlotte Flair, for example, would never.

That said, it would be ridiculous to deny Rousey’s talent in the ring. Her matches with Alexa Bliss, Natalya, Nia Jax, Bayley, Nikki Bella, Sasha Banks, Charlotte Flair, and more have ranged from “good” to “amazing”, with her recent Royal Rumble encounter with Banks being an early “Match of the Year” candidate in WWE.

Banks, Lynch, and Flair have all main-evented main roster Pay Per Views and have all had Match of the Year candidates without Rousey wrestling (you can fire this Jim Ross take into the sun, by the way).

So to say Rousey changed the game would be an unintentional shot at the women who have been here for years, changing the game. (And that includes all the women who didn’t get to main event a PPV.)

However, Banks felt like a huge star in her feud with Ronda. Nia’s best matches came against Rousey. Lynch and Flair are two of the biggest stars in wrestling thanks to this rivalry with Rousey. Though the argument is pretty much just semantics for many, there’s a distinction between changing the game and raising the stakes.

Rousey has done the latter and should be applauded for her excellent work in the ring. But until she stops crossing the line with low-brow insults and breaking kayfabe – and doing it while being booked to squash accomplished wrestlers like Ruby – it’s hard to call her a game-changer. That title should be reserved for the Natalya, Asuka, Charlotte, Becky, Sasha, Naomi, Bayley, Alicia Fox, Nikki Bella, Ruby Riott, and all the others I don’t have the space to mention in this column.

That said, Rousey was definitely a game-changer in UFC. Nobody can take that away from her. And she could still become a game-changer in pro wrestling! However, as of right now, that’s a label I’ll reserve for others, and I’ll choose to praise Rousey with different words that appropriately contextualize her impact on the wrestling business – words that don’t unintentionally detract from her more experienced colleagues.