The intentions may have been pure, but to me, comparing anyone to Randy Orton may as well be telling them they’re vanilla ice cream, so when Ric Flair said his daughter Charlotte was akin to the female equivalent of Randy Orton, well, that’s not necessarily a compliment as far as I’m concerned.
Frankly, Ric probably should’ve stuck with naming all the attributes he thinks Randy Orton has that he loves, and applied those to Charlotte without actually naming Randy Orton, but what’s done is done.
Ric Flair thinks Charlotte is boring, stale, never-changing, and getting put into a program with her is getting put into the friend zone of WWE Creative for the women’s division.
To which by that logic, is completely untrue and unfair to Charlotte, to compare her to Randy Orton.
Randy Orton, is exactly what I said he is, and he genuinely is the equivalent of being put into the friend zone. Poor Edge, makes this monumental comeback after nine years of forced retirement, and then is immediately thrown into the slammer of WWE Creative, being forced to run a months-long program with Randy Orton.
Most wrestling fans can only guess the queue of younger guys salivating at the dream of getting to work with Edge, and I can only imagine the potential four-star+ matches that could be had if he got to work with guys like Kevin Owens, Sami Zayn, Johnny Gargano or Tommaso Ciampa. But instead, the WWE welcomed Edge back with a soul-crushing program with Randy Orton.
Charlotte Flair, on the other hand is in my opinion, genuinely the best female superstar in professional wrestling, bar none. Ric is definitely not wrong about that part, it’s just not fair or cool to compare her to Randy Orton.
In the grand spectrum of female wrestlers, I know wrestling fans are super high on stars like Asuka, Alexa Bliss, Rhea Ripley, and of course Becky Lynch. Don’t get me wrong, I was super on board with Asuka’s undefeated streak, I lust after Alexa Bliss as a married man probably shouldn’t, Ripley’s hunting of Shayna Baszler was the best women’s feud in NXT, and no woman in wrestling has ever had the meteoric rise and ascension to superstardom like Becky Lynch has.
But make no mistake, when the day is over, when it comes to a pound-for-pound total package in women’s wrestling, there’s really nobody better than Charlotte Flair.
Physically, she’s strong, athletic, acrobatic, and has among the deepest pools of wrestling moves of all the women in the industry. She can slam men like Chyna, do better moonsaults than Io Shirai, and last as long in the ring as Seth Rollins. She sells as only the offspring of Ric Flair can sell, and she does a phenomenal job day in and day out at being able to evoke emotion from fans, be it physically or through her behavior.
She’s reinvented herself several times since her rise to the main roster, sometimes more subtle than others, but she’s played the role of the babyface, and she’s played the role of the heel that fans love to boo, but these days it seems more like in spite of how she’s trying to be a heel, she’s earned so much respect, that people are still going to cheer for her anyway. I think the best thing she does is when she gets onto the ring apron, she waits until a referee or someone else holds the ropes open for her
Make no mistake, without Charlotte, Asuka’s streak does not go down in vain, without Charlotte, there really is no rise of Becky Lynch, and without Charlotte, Rhea Ripley doesn’t make it to Wrestlemania. For every female superstar there is in the WWE, most of them don’t get to where they are without Charlotte Flair crossing their paths at some point in time.
And with Charlotte winning the NXT Women’s Championship, she’s once again taken another step into uncharted territory, with a main roster mainstay collecting an NXT championship, and creating all sorts of wonder on what’s going to happen to her, or what’s going to happen to the championship. Combined with the coronavirus-locked down world we live in now, nobody will be able to tell what’s going to happen next, but if there was ever anyone who was going to steer the ship through rocky waters, there really is nobody better than Charlotte Flair.
And that’s definitely something that Randy Orton wouldn’t be capable of doing, even in his best days. Get your shit together, old man Ric, and show some god damn respect for your own daughter.
