WWE isn’t being Fair to Flair in how they overwork Charlotte

Charlotte Flair may very well be The Queen of WWE, but the company is walking a very thin line with her in 2020 and run the risk of a proverbial royal mutiny.

When Charlotte Flair defeated Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania 36, I was delighted. Over the years, WWE have made a significant thing out of ‘graduating’ Superstars up from NXT to the ‘main rosters.’ Yellow-brand careers traded for shots at stardom on either Monday Night RAW or Friday Night SmackDown. Seldom, though, have wrestlers gone in the other direction.

Granted, there are exceptions. Tyler Breeze is versatile and hard-working and just loves to wrestle; that he was able to go back to NXT after finding little to smile about after his call-up (barring the hilarity of the Fashion Files, of course)  was perfect.

Finn Balor, too, has rejuvenated himself and, it appears, his own enthusiasm for wrestling as a whole with his switch back to Full Sail (well, now the WWE PC).

Charlotte Flair’s win at WrestleMania, I thought, broke that trend. I saw it as the first time that WWE looked at one of their top stars and stopped seeing only on RAW and Friday Night SmackDown as the places they could create memorable matches and moments, and began to see NXT as a genuine third brand.

They wanted, in my eyes, to give NXT a major boost in the war, such as it is, against AEW for ratings, and decided Charlotte Flair would be the best weapon for the job. As one of their biggest stars and best in-ring performers, they’d have been right, too.

Finally, the two-way chop-and-change for Superstars between the red and blue brands was over – there were now three, realistic options. Flair was once again an NXT Superstar. Unfortunately, I was wrong.

Rather than just send Flair to NXT as a bold, standalone move, WWE has opted, effectively, to rotate Flair across all three brands as some sort of solo touring circus. It’s a backhanded compliment, of course.

In their minds, Flair is good enough to be one of a few Superstars who can cross the brand divide – whatever there is left of it now thanks to the Invitational – and still get ratings and headlines. But the problem is that, in reality, they’re now using The Queen to the point of saturation.

What would have been good for NXT had this been a simple ‘Flair to NXT switch’ was also something positive for Flair, too. Granted, it was a little difficult to adjust to seeing her backtracking as a heel away from fights and opposition on the NXT roster after main eventing WrestleMania last year, but that’s just professional wrestling for you.

Adjustment and change. She would have settled back into that roster and stood atop of it soon enough. What we are in danger of having now is a Flair overload – and that’s coming from me as a huge fan of hers.

Flair has all but exhausted herself in becoming arguably WWE’s most dominant female Superstar. Granted, over the last 18-months, she’d become subordinate to Becky Lynch in being the most talked about female star in the company but, for me, she’s stood alone as the best in-ring talent in the female division – or any other – for the last few years now, Lynch included.

That she might have been able to spend a year or two flying under the radar (in relative terms at least) on NXT, finding fresh stories, opposition, and matches, would have been perfect for Flair and ideal for us as fans.

But what happens now that we’re likely to see Charlotte every week on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays? You end up with an athlete pushed beyond their limits and a fanbase left wanting less of her and more of something different. To get all 1992 on you for a minute, that’s hardly Fair to Flair, is it?

If that happens, fans could start to resent her – and not in a way fans should resent a heel, either. It’s a genuinely fine line WWE are treading right now, and they need to be careful with the choices they make. Could Charlotte pull off working three shows with, say, two championships? Of course she could. But she shouldn’t.