The development of female stars at WWE over the years has been on and off. While there have been several gems discovered including the likes of Trish Stratus and Lita, there have been many failed experiments along the way. Many gorgeous women and many talented women have been given opportunities in WWE, with only a select few of them being able to achieve stardom of some kind. Now there’s a new star, who the WWE is building the women’s roster around and who is supposedly genetically superior.
A blonde, gorgeous girl with long hair. An athletic gal that has seen her skills improve dramatically since she debuted in professional wrestling three years ago. The daughter of the “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. This is exactly the sort of character that WWE so desperately desires as a top female star and who can blame them? Trish Stratus is arguably the greatest female wrestler of all time and was blonde. Stacey Keibler continues to be a well-known figure in the entertainment industry and was blonde. Torrie Wilson and Sable were also hugely over and popular women at their peak and they were both blonde. It’s the perfect look for the poster girl for women’s wrestling. Charlotte has all of this working in her favour.
Despite all of this, Charlotte still continues to struggle along as women’s champion. We’ve endured Charlotte as champion for 247 days as of me writing this. In a couple of months, Charlotte will break Nikki Bella’s record for longest title reign in the modern era. My prediction is that Charlotte will be making it to day 302 as the champion, securing her place in history. What statistics and making history can’t solve is the current dire state of the women’s roster.
I’ve been trying very hard to be positive about women’s wrestling on the main roster. I sat through Nikki Bella as the champion and watched Charlotte beat her for the championship, a title which I still believe Charlotte won far too early into her main roster run. Despite some bumps on the road during the “Divas Revolution,” it started to seem like everything was coming together. Soon enough, WrestleMania 32 came along and everything seemed to fall into place. Charlotte, Sasha Banks and Becky Lynch put on the best match in all of WrestleMania, ushering in a “new era” for the women’s roster with the re-introduction of the women’s championship.
Even though the wrong woman won, I genuinely believed that this was the turning point for the perception and presentation of women’s wrestling on the main roster for years to come. They gave the WrestleMania match the time and the spotlight, and the women surpassed all of our expectations. With all the women in the ring on the next night on RAW and Natalya stepping up to the plate, I was all giddy. This was exactly what women’s wrestling on the main roster should have been. Hard-working women not battling for the red carpet and stardom, but for the pride of being the best female wrestler in all of WWE. This was everything I could have wanted. Two months later, that dream has been totally shattered.
They took, what was essentially an easy rivalry to book, and turned it into a complete joke of a storyline. Booking Charlotte vs Natalya should have been as easy as pie. Let the girls put on great matches at Payback and Extreme Rules and watch women’s wrestling in WWE truly evolve. Easy right? No. Because this is WWE, they had to make things so much more difficult for themselves. Instead of playing to both women’s strengths as wrestlers, they played to their weaknesses as talkers. They had to do long talking segments on the Ambrose Asylum and MizTV, and even had a long contract signing centred around Ric Flair and the McMahons to go into Extreme Rules. Even the parts where the women could have made up for all of this was completely neglected.
At Payback, there was a repeat of a shoot ending to a WWF Championship match from 19 years ago. They re-enacted the Montreal Screwjob, with little reaction. There was no repercussion or point to any of this, as the “crooked” referee was just let off the hook and back to refereeing matches as normal. They did a rematch at Extreme Rules, where things didn’t fare any better.
The stipulation for Charlotte and Natalya’s submission match was that if Ric Flair appeared at all, the belt went to Natalya. Natalya locks on the Sharpshooter and is about to make Charlotte submit when Ric’s music hit. She sees someone with white hair in Flair’s robe on the entrance ramp and lets go of the hold. Natalya was so fooled by this person that she stopped what she was doing and pestered the referee to call for the bell. Dana Brooke is revealed to be this impostor, who distracts Natalya again later on to give Charlotte the victory. Natalya was made out to be a total fool twice in one match. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Then on Monday Night Raw, I just completely gave up. Firstly, this three-hour episode of RAW featured TWO ACTIVE FEMALE WRESTLERS. Two. They were Charlotte and Dana, who came out with Ric Flair. No sign of Natalya, who was screwed out of the championship. No sign of Becky Lynch, no sign of Sasha Banks, no sign of Paige and no sign of anyone else.
Then Ric Flair was slurring his words as he gave props to Charlotte and Dana. Charlotte responds by mumbling something about Ric Flair travelling around the world. Meanwhile, both Flairs have tears in their eyes. These tears were a clear giveaway that the father and daughter were breaking up. The fans shortly figured this out but even so, Charlotte still rambled on incoherently for five minutes to get to the point that she didn’t want Ric around anymore. Charlotte was completely lost as she “turned” on Ric Flair, saying that he was dead to her as part of a very uncomfortable segment. There was literally no part of this ten minute segment which I considered to be entertainment, which is the whole purpose of WWE. To top this all of, Ric Flair was tweeting about basketball and the NBA about thirty minutes after supposedly having his heart broken by his own daughter.
I was just baffled by the feedback I saw on Twitter about this segment. People were talking about how Charlotte cut the best promo of her career and that she was on fire during this promo. Clearly they did not hear her tripping on a lot her lines and being completely derailed by the “what” chants from the crowd. Then I read one guy claim that “Charlotte has arrived” and my first thought was, it took Charlotte ten months of being pushed as the top female in the company for her to “arrive”? It was not her big match at WrestleMania. According to this dude, Charlotte messing up her break-up with Ric was the arrival of Charlotte.
This segment was the moment where I just realised that whatever level the WWE is expecting Charlotte and the women’s division to get to is almost an impossibility at this point. Maybe there’s one way to remedy this and it firstly starts off with Charlotte dropping the championship. She can’t be the champion going forward anymore as she’s jumped the shark and it’s going to be very difficult for her to be able to revitalise herself into something great at this stage of the game.
What I propose is that after what Charlotte’s done, Charlotte cuts a promo next week about how there’s nobody that can beat her on the main roster. Then we get the debut of Bayley, who reminds her that the last time they thought was on NXT. In that match, Bayley won. Bayley challenges Charlotte for the title and she’s given the title shot as long as she beats Dana Brooke. Bayley dominates Dana and then moves onto her title match with Charlotte at Money In The Bank, and she wins the title. They have their rematch at Battleground and as soon as the dust settles and Bayley has won, Sasha Banks makes her grand return. Sasha reminds Bayley of their match at NXT TakeOver: Brooklyn, which took place on the day before Summerslam 2015. In that match, Bayley won. Sasha says that she’s still not gotten over that loss and wants to avenge her defeat and finally win the Women’s Championship at this year’s Summerslam. After a number one contendership match on RAW between Sasha and Charlotte, Sasha earns the right to fight Bayley for the title. Then at Summerslam, Sasha beats Bayley to become the champion at last.
Then the possibilities are endless. If you’re still dead set on Charlotte being in the title picture, throw her into the mix at Night of Champions, or do a fatal four way between Charlotte, Bayley, Sasha and Becky Lynch. Throw Paige in there or Emma at the end of the year. Then there’s a possibility of something really good coming out of this. However, it’s not going to work with Charlotte as the champion. It’s not going to work with repeats of the Montreal Screwjob. It’s not going to work with “emotional” and “controversial” segments on RAW. It’s not going to work with talking segments on RAW, including appearances on MizTV. If you just try really hard, maybe there’s hope.
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