In the world of WWE, pressure is etched into the job description. Athletes are expected to perform live matches dozens — if not hundreds — of times a year and execute flawlessly and safely to entertain sold-out arenas around the world.
When you’re Charlotte Flair, that pressure reaches heights few in the industry have ever felt. As the daughter of living legend Ric Flair, the intense scrutiny comes from all directions. From fans, who will turn on you in an instant if they feel a push is unwarranted. From WWE itself, which has entrusted Flair to be the standard-bearer of its women’s division — 14 times and counting. From her last name, arguably the most famous in the history of the business.
And, perhaps most of all, from herself.
Last February, that pressure mounted into one of the biggest moments of Flair’s career. After spending more than a year away from WWE rehabbing a knee injury — the longest on-screen absence of her run — Flair was slated to return at the 2025 Royal Rumble, where she'd enter the match and jump straight onto the road to WrestleMania 41.
Being part of the Rumble wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling for Flair, seeing as she had already been in four up until that point, never finishing worse than third, but the unique circumstances surrounding this iteration created an uncertainty that can cause even surefire WWE Hall of Famers to crack.
“[I wondered] if I was going to be ‘The Queen’ that everyone remembered,” Flair admitted to Uncrowned. “For that whole almost year and half that I was gone, the only thing I could think about was that one of the things I brought to the table was my athleticism. And being out on injury, being scared about if I was going to be just as athletic, just as good — was I going to be good enough for the fans?”
Flair’s return had been teased for several weeks leading up to the Royal Rumble, with vignettes showing her driving a Rolls Royce, lounging on a yacht and aboard a private jet, cutting taped promos about her greatness. The vignettes were well executed and fitting for Flair’s character to that point in her career, but save for a few seconds of her actual injury and her running, they largely kept expectations sky-high for her return.
It was yet another wrinkle for Flair to overcome.
“People already knew I was coming back instead of having one big surprise moment,” Flair said. “Before I came back, the vignettes didn’t really show the struggles that I had gone through over the year, so I felt even more pressure to be on top of my game.”
It didn't stop there. Hidden at the time from the rest of the world were struggles Flair was facing in her personal life. Flair, who had been married to fellow WWE star Andrade, kept her divorce a secret for months as she continued her comeback journey.
“Besides the knee injury, I had so much going on in my personal life,” Flair said. “The added pressure of knowing that my marriage was falling apart and that I had filed for divorce but hadn’t told anyone, so it was that combination that I was failing at my job and failing at my home life. All of that pressure coming back, I didn’t know what to expect except that this was all I had worked for and all I had wanted.”
The perseverance ultimately paid off. Any insecurities about her in-ring ability or how fans would receive her melted away as she entered No. 27 in the Royal Rumble. She received a massive pop from the crowd and eventually won the match, becoming the first woman in WWE history with two Rumble victories.
In one night, Flair’s physical comeback was complete and her WrestleMania spot reestablished, but her rehabilitation was far from over.
Flair’s divorce became public in the days that followed her record-setting Royal Rumble win, and it even became a shoot moment in a now-infamous promo between her and then-WWE Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton. Stratton, as physically talented as any women’s star in WWE, referenced Flair being “0-3” in marriages during a "SmackDown" promo. Flair, who later admitted that she was caught off guard by the quip, fired back and the WrestleMania build became overshadowed by a deeply personal jab.
“I focused so much on being perfect, and when my divorce unexpectedly made headlines the day I was supposed to be at 'Raw' to announce I was back and picking an opponent,” Flair said, “[I was affected by] not being able to control that narrative and having to let it go, having the run up until WrestleMania and being so lost as a character after ‘Mania.”
Although 2025 had started off huge for Flair, she suddenly found herself in a purgatory in the wake of WrestleMania 41. Ironically, as John Cena was in the midst of his own polarizing heel run, he was one of the guiding voices for Flair last spring, urging the veteran to let go of this unattainable idea of perfection and embrace Ashley Fliehr.
In response, Flair resumed writing a first-person piece for Players Tribune, which she initially began composing after her WrestleMania 39 match against Rhea Ripley in 2023.
"I had kept putting it off and putting it off," Flair said. "I never felt like it was needed and wondered if people really wanted to hear how I feel.
“Cena had this little moment with me backstage and said to ‘just be you, stop trying to be perfect.' That’s what gave me the courage to put it all out there. It was the first time I think people really got me and saw the person behind Charlotte. I think I play Charlotte very well, but fans were also believing that Charlotte was the person. They couldn’t see the distinction because I was able to hide behind the character for so long.”
In the essay, Flair didn’t shy away from anything, discussing her divorce, fertility journey, injury rehab and giving flowers to a dozen women’s wrestlers in the process. The article showed a side of Flair and vulnerability she'd never before shown in her decade-long WWE run. It was also published days after her first televised tag-team match with Alexa Bliss, a pairing that was initially dubbed “Allies of Convenience.”
“I don’t think that I could have planned it any better,” Flair said. “For so long I liked to control things, I liked to have things pre-planned as to where I’m headed, but I gave in, wrote the article and then all of a sudden there was this great pairing with Lexi and the rest is history. It’s almost like all of those things had to happen to get to this point.”
Unconventional pairings aren’t uncommon in wrestling — The Rock 'n' Sock connection, RKBro, The Bar all come to mind — but just because there are two major stars in a tag-team together doesn’t guarantee it will get over with fans. Like everything, there needs to be chemistry, a compelling narrative and, more often than not, some comedy sprinkled in.
It was a big change for Flair’s usually serious character.
“I was so uptight and I put so much pressure on the title and always being in the title picture, that somewhere along the journey I forgot that a champion can be goofy, a champion can be funny, a champion can fall, a champion can have flaws. [I felt that] if I’m always in the title picture, I always have to be top-notch, the person to beat, to win, to uphold that standard of excellence, and I lost these little beats of personality that didn’t make me shine.”
Although they seemingly existed in different realms as WWE characters, Flair and Bliss quickly became appointment viewing on "SmackDown," consistently presenting as the best aspect of the show on a weekly basis. As fans took notice, the duo quickly rose up the ranks in the women’s tag-team division, ultimately winning the championships at SummerSlam Night 1 — less than a month removed their first match as a team.
“I held up that tag title like it was a world championship because, to me, that’s how it felt,” Flair said. “It wasn’t in the cards, it wasn’t expected, but it did mean that much to me. I realized I can be funny, I can be goofy, I can take the piss out of myself, I can show that I care about someone without worrying if they are going to hurt me or betray me. That’s what this partnership has allowed me to do with Lexi — bring those walls down that I built up of what I thought a champion should be.”
The two ultimately held the tag titles for more than three months before losing them to Asuka and Kairi Sane, but it hasn’t marked the end of their time as a team. Partially due to Flair and Bliss, the women’s tag division is arguably the best it has ever been in WWE, with stars and former champions aplenty. Flair still obviously wants to be at the top of the card, but as she’s shown over the second half of 2025, you can do that in myriad ways.
“Even though I’ve been able to have this comedic or less-serious role, the competitiveness within Charlotte is not gone,” Flair said. “I’m still competitive, still want to be the best in whatever role I am in. Would I like to go after a world title again? 100 percent. Will I do things differently? 100 percent. I think it’s all part of this new path and new journey, and focusing on this partnership with Lexi and putting that ahead of the world title.”
As we sit days away from the 2026 Royal Rumble, it’s easy to forget the place Flair was in a year ago. Physically, Flair looked as if she never missed a beat and won the 30-woman match, but we didn’t have the whole story. It was easy for fans to look at the 14-time world champion and believe they already had her pegged — that “The Queen” was on the fast track back to her throne at the top of the women’s division.
Now, after opening up to and connecting with fans like never before, she appears more than ready to reclaim that spot.
The rehabilitation of Charlotte Flair is finally complete.
