WWE star Charlotte Flair has seen a resurgence in popularity since returning to SmackDown. The multi-time champion is currently one-half of the WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions with Alexa Bliss. Many credit her partner for helping her regain fans’ support.
Consider former WWE champ and Hall of Famer Bully Ray, amongst those who believe Alexa helped Charlotte immensely. During a recent episode of the “Busted Open” podcast, Bully shared his thoughts about Charlotte’s comeback.
“Charlotte has gotten the rub from Alexa when it comes to how the fans perceive Charlotte,” he said, adding, “The fans wanted nothing to do with Charlotte.”
Bully mentioned that the fans were initially on board with her when she returned after over a year away due to a knee injury and went on to win the Royal Rumble. However, the fans seemed split between love and hate when she made her next appearance on another WWE show.
He also indicated that a vignette Charlotte did, where she was in her knee brace and talking about “getting out of her own head,” really resonated with him more than anything. He said after that, “We got the same old, same old” Charlotte story, where she was immediately in the championship picture.
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“The fanbase was tired of Charlotte being in the title scene. So tired that the whole program with Tiffany [Stratton] did not work,” he told host Dave LaGreca.
“Tiffany could not hang at that moment in time, thus the match at WrestleMania was what it was, and it was more forgettable than Jimmy vs. Jey at 40,” he said.
He claimed that since fans love Alexa so much — who was previously aligned with Bray Wyatt — this helped them get on board with liking Charlotte. In addition, he and LaGreca agreed that Charlotte is “having fun,” which is something we haven’t seen her do in forever in WWE.
Along with that, Bully dropped a bold suggestion on the podcast for what WWE should do with Charlotte’s storyline for as long as possible.
“I would keep Charlotte Flair out of the World Championship picture for so long that the people want to see her come back, and they cheer her when she comes back. In order for that to happen, I believe you need to build another Charlotte Flair,” he said.
Flair set quite a standard for women in professional wrestling, becoming a 14-time women’s world champion between winning the WWE Divas Championship once, as well as the SmackDown Women’s Championship and Raw Women’s Championship multiple times.
She initially had assistance from her legendary father, Ric Flair, who eventually stopped appearing with her for matches. Now that she’s away from the main women’s championships, it definitely seems that she is having more fun and gaining much more popularity with fans thanks to her association with Alexa.
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