Charlotte Flair

[Grimmas]

cubbymark said:

"A second generation star who happens to be Ric Flair’s daughter. Just because you are the offspring of a wrestling legend, doesn’t always mean all the natural talent transfers over. Just look at David Flair.

She is considered to be one of the WWE Horsewomen and is generally pushed very well. To me she’s probably the most underrated of the four. She might get some backlash from folks, but she can get in the ring and do very athletic and creative things. Charlotte is also a tremendous big match wrestler.

When she is a heel, she definitely exudes her daddy’s swagger and arrogance. She can be extremely vicious when necessary. "

[Grimmas]

Charlotte is really good and steps up her game in big situations. She gets a lot of shit due to her booking, but you can't hold that against her (well I can't).

An amazing athlete who gets vicious and is a joy to watch. Since I'm out of touch on WWE I'll have to rewatch some things, but I am never disappointed in a Charlotte match (outside of who wins).

[elliott]

The Hell in a Cell vs Sasha and the Falls COunt Anywhere vs Sasha are two of my all time favorite matches. Would love some more recent recommendations. 

[WingedEagle]

A few other greats if you haven't seen them:

Charlotte vs. Sasha Banks vs. Bayley vs. Becky Lynch (NXT Takeover Rival 2/11/2015)

Sasha Banks vs. Charlotte (Iron Man Match, Roadblock: End of the Line 12/18/2016)

Charlotte vs. Bayley (WWE Raw 2/13/2017)

Becky Lynch vs. Charlotte Flair (Last Woman Standing, Evolution 10/28/2018)

Ronda Rousey vs. Charlotte Flair (Survivor Series 11/18/2018)

Charlotte Flair vs. Trish  Stratus (Summerslam 8/11/2019)

Charlotte Flair vs. Rhea Ripley (WWE Wrestlemania 36 4/5/2020)

 

[Grimmas]

1 minute ago, elliott said:

The Hell in a Cell vs Sasha and the Falls COunt Anywhere vs Sasha are two of my all time favorite matches. Would love some more recent recommendations. 

vs Becky at Evolution (my fav show ever) in a Last Man Standing was insanely great!

vs Ronda Rousey at Survivor Series 2018 is a great intense brawl

vs Trish Stratus at SummerSlam 2019, biased because I was live and LOVE Trish, but a great current star vs legend match.

vs Rhea Ripley at WrestleMania 36, the best match on the no crowd mania. They worked super stiff to make up for it. An impressive performance.

Let me know if you need more, I could go on.

[elliott]

Thanks yall! Great starting point! I never watch modern stuff anymore but I actually did watch WRestleMania 36 with my non-fan roommate and we both loved the Rhea Ripley match 

[DR Ackermann]

I've seen good Charlotte matches followed by matches where she looked completely lost in the ring. Too inconsistent for me to give serious consideration at this point, especially considering how many of her peers are more deserving and won't necessarily make my list. You could name a hundred current workers better than her right now. With that said, she's had some great matches.

[Boss Rock]

Unless she really turns it around in the next five years, no chance. To be fair, she's had some great matches. The whole Sasha feud is obviously terrific and the Asuka Mania 34 and Ronda Survivor Series matches are also great (the latter perhaps being the best Fed match of 2018). I liked the Evolution match against Becky well enough, but that felt like a typical WWE plunder match as opposed to the classic it was heralded as.

Besides those matches, she's usually mediocre to actively bad. Frequent timing issues and being out of place, terrible seller, and really bad execution. Her corkscrew moonsault looks great and that's it. She's athletic but very awkward and rigid. Sasha should've gotten her push.

[NotJayTabb]

Yeah, agree with Boss Rock's post above. She's always been the least of the Horsewomen for me, her instincts aren't as good and I don't think she's got the range of the others. While the other 3 all feel different to their NXT incarnations, she's pretty much stayed the same in terms of character and ability.

[Ed.]

I can't really hold it against her for her character not changing much - when WWE are only interested in presenting you as Charlotte Flair, daughter of Ric, it's hard to do a lot to change that up, and why would you want to change that if you're gonna get pushed regardless .  And as much as I love her work, does Sasha really change her character? She just changes her hair colour but is still The Boss like she was 6 years ago.  Asuka's character doesn't change for the better.  Bayley and Becky changed out of necessity because they were going nowhere as babyfaces.  It's not really a division where the women are constantly evolving and changing their act, so I don't see it as a specific criticism for Charlotte.

I'm not a fan of her booking though, she gets handed too much, she's almost always in the title mix and there's no sense of her ever having to struggle to achieve success.  She sucks as a babyface, and after 6-7 years of being on top, I'm not sure I'm thrilled about any more heel title runs from her.  

Her in-ring is inconsistent, but she is big match Charlotte.  There's not many of her big singles matches that don't deliver, and all the matches mentioned so far are very good at minimum.  I could watch a 3 hour network special or DVD of her best work and be thoroughly entertained, but week to week she can be frustrating and there can be bad performances.  TLC against Kairi and Asuka she was downright dangerous in the match.  

She has a shot of the top 100 on the merit of how many very good-great matches she could have come 2026, but I don't see her shaking off the negatives to her case.

[elliott]

I watched the Trish match and it sort of convinced me I don't need to spend much time on Charlotte compared to some of the other modern female candidates. 

I don't follow the modern product or the discussion around it well enough to know the rhetoric surrounding Charlotte, but my impression based on her NXT & first couple of main roster years was that she was a great natural athlete who didn't have the instincts or charisma of Sasha. She could easily become a great wrestler & star but it would be because of her natural athleticism and not necessarily her charisma. But in this match Charlotte (likely at the direction of WWE) was really leaning into the acting & character work aspect of wrestling and it falls super flat for me. This match has a lot of her standing chin up arms raised and it doesn't really feel earned to me. It feels really manufactured and thought out. "I'll look like a star if I do this." When she's in against someone like Trish who is naturally super charismatic, it really doesn't work for me. I want to see Charlotte more as a wrestling machine who overwhelms people as a superior athlete rather than someone leaning into her character work and acting because her shit talking and posing routine has yet to connect with me. 

[Kadaveri]

40 minutes ago, elliott said:

I want to see Charlotte more as a wrestling machine who overwhelms people as a superior athlete rather than someone leaning into her character work and acting because her shit talking and posing routine has yet to connect with me. 

You should watch the Ronda match. That's the closest she's ever got to wrestling like that.

[elliott]

I actually do intend on watching that one. I've only seen her first WM tag match but that was enough to tell me I need to watch all the Ronda matches

[Boss Rock]

The Ronda match might actually be my favorite Charlotte match, but I do think it helps she's wrestling Ronda's type of match.

[DylanZero]

David was a better Flair.

[cubbymark]

Bumping this thread in light of Charlotte’s match with Rhea Ripley at Wrestlemania 39.  This is Exhibit A of when Charlotte is on her A game, there are few people who are better. 
 

 

[DMJ]

WARNING - Writing this as I wait for my plane to board after countless delays and cancellations. So I'm going to go long...

 

Charlotte will make my list.

Not only do I think her resume of good-to-great matches is there, but she has some of the intangibles that I highly regard and that I think people almost overlook or criticize her for in a way they don't, say, John Cena or CM Punk or Brock Lesnar.

With Charlotte, there's not just "big fight feel" in a lot of her matches, but there's also a legit sense of "This could go off the rails" and "Everything else on this show is fake, but Charlotte's match is real."

Its not the best example - I think the Becky Lynch/Ronda feud is better - but the most recent Mania story with Tiffany Stratton is a good example. During the build, there was legitimate question as to where the line was between Charlotte being in-character and some real-life animosity and talk of "burials." It made the match "must see" because every punch, every miscommunication, every big spot was being watched in a way very different than Rhea/IYO/Belair. The latter was the better match in every regard...but the former was the one where I watched it like a no-net high-wire act. I tend to review and rate matches with an "anything I see/feel/hear" is part of the grade. Its why Foley/Taker in the cell is a 5-star match to me just as much as Bret/Austin at WM13 and so is Punk/Cena at MITB and so is Flair/Steamboat (take your pick) and so is, warts and all, the Montreal Screwjob match. If I'm emotionally invested/mentally engaged, that matters. The edge of the seat is the edge of the seat no matter what is pulling me towards it. A trainwreck and a masterpiece can both get me there. 

And, in 2025, when we've seen every spot possible, when so much of the WWE feels "safe," when the most interesting aspects are basically what's going on backstage and the finish of a given match*, Charlotte is one of the few who keeps me engaged because you don't really know what you're going to get, not just with the finish, but almost move-to-move.

Now, is she a sloppy worker? Sure. Does her moonsault look awful? Yeah. But Cena calls spots. CM Punk can be awkward. Brock Lesnar can seemingly turn it off and on whether he wants to actually work or not and is wildly inconsistent (even against the same opponent in the case of WrestleMania 31 being a banger and WrestleMania 34 being total dogshit). 

But, like those three, she has great presence. She's a terrible babyface, but an all-time great US women's heel (maybe even the best ever in that category), a naturally unlikable nepo-baby who, like many great villains, so clearly wants to be loved and adored by the masses but can never be and - when she's willing to play along - takes that feeling of rejection and turns it outward so that she is every bit the despicable narcissist we see her as. Now, the fact that this character seems informed by real-life anxieties and depression is worrisome and I have actually have sympathy towards Ashley Fleihr, but I won't deny that it adds to the intrigue and the drama presented on-screen. It couldn't be scripted better for the daughter of a guy infamous for not being able to separate reality and wrestling to be plagued by the same thing. 

She's not the greatest promo, in fact, she's among the worst and I do think its the weakest part of her game. But there's that trainwreck thing again. Its very entertaining and interesting to me to watch her go out in front of 20,000 bloodthirsty fans who want to tear her to shreds and, often times, eat shit. Its almost reminiscent of the I Think You Should Leave sketch where Tim Robinson plays the silent performer whose audiences are so insanely hostile that he can't get through a single minute of his act. A Charlotte promo, at its best (or worst?) is that. But, of course, everyone calls it "go away heat." Again, it doesn't really matter how you hook me, Charlotte Flair in-ring segments hook me because the likelihood of something go incredibly wrong and getting "real" is higher than what you get with any other woman. 

Now, I'm not going to posit that this makes her a top 10 or 20 or even top 50 nominee, but I do think there is space on my list of 100 to give this woman her flowers for being among the hottest of hot messes in modern wrestling history while simultaneously actually delivering some excellent matches and somehow not completely flaming out in spectacular fashion. As a wrestling fan, I'll admit to digging the chaos sometimes and she brings it. 




* Was the selling point of either Cody/Roman match actually how good the action would be or was it whether the WWE would pull the trigger and end Roman's...well, reign?