The last time Charlotte Flair was wrestling on television, the WWE was a very different place.
Vince McMahon was still in charge of creative, Paul “Triple H” Levesque was a retired legend outside of the public eye, and Becky Lynch was still masquerading as a heel on RAW. Speaking of RAW, that's where Liv Morgan wrestled, wasn't where a still medically uncleared Bayley wrestled, and occasionally was where the Women's Tag Team Champions, Sasha Banks and Liv Morgan, wrestled too before they walked out of the company eight days after WrestleMania Backlash 2022 – which, coincidentally enough, featured the “I Quit Match” that currently stands as Flair's final match in the promotion.
Deemed “out indefinitely” with a fractured radius on the May 11th edition of “The Bump,” Flair has watched the company she has long worked for change more in three months than the previous nine years combined, saw her fiance become her husband and then become an even bigger fixture of AEW as part of La Faccion Ingobernable, and watch her father wrestle his “Last Match” while the entire pro graps world watched on in amazement.
Did Flair wish she could get in on the action? You bet, but in professional wrestling, patience is sometimes more important than in-ring heat, as an angle that jumps the shark too soon can sometimes be even worse than one that goes on too long. As fans watch Bayley, Dakota Kai, and Iyo Sky attempt to re-write the rules on RAW and Morgan hold onto her belt for dear life on SmackDown, Flair can sit back, recompose herself, and most importantly of all, plot her return, as she did with “Stone Cold” Steve Austin on the latest edition of Broken Skull Sessions.
Hell Yeah!! https://t.co/cFLOo30hp5
— Steve Austin (@steveaustinBSR) August 15, 2022
Charlotte Flair will be back and better than ever before WWE fans know it.
For how good “Stone Cold” was in the ring and on the mic, he may have found his true calling during his post-wrestling career with the Broken Skull Sessions, as there's just something about sitting across from the “Texas Rattlesnake” with a few Steveweisers that gets professional wrestlers to open up.
Whether asking about a specific match, the psychology of wrestling, or about outside of the ring stories like growing up in a wrestling family or how they got interested in the business, Austin just seems to know how to get another performer talking, including Flair, who is the second member of her family to appear on the show 24 episodes after her father.
Why did Flair get into wrestling? Because of her late brother Reed, who passed away back in 2013. Did she intentionally drop her RAW Women's Championship belt in her infamous segment with Becky Lynch and Sonya Deville? No, it was an accident. And what did Flair think of Banks and Naomi walking out of WWE and leaving their belts behind? Well, she wouldn't say, but she did call Banks her Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat, which, considering who her father is, is about the highest praise “The Queen” could give.
Surely if you're a fan of wrestling, this was an episode of BSS to watch, but the most interesting takeaway from the episode came when Austin asked about what's coming next for Flair, as she went into detail about her hiatus and eventual return, as you can read below via a transcription from Fightful.
“The problem with me is I always want to be on top. I never want to slow down and if someone didn't tell me to slow down and smell the roses, I would just constantly be working because I didn't find myself or find who I was and all these things until I started working. Since 2012, that's why I'm here. Highs and lows, I wish Backlash had been my Mania match. Things happen, whatever, but I left on a high. I'm still looking for that next big feud, I'm still looking for that next big match. You've got Rhea (Ripley) probably wanting to beat me. Bianca (Belair), Liv (Morgan). There is so much for me to be excited for. The problem is, for me, I could just keep going. I always want to be better and sometimes being a perfectionist can get…Mania, I wanted it to be too perfect and when I got to Backlash, I was like, ‘You do you, boo.' That's why it came across…this is my opinion, I do want to come back with a different layer. I came back after last year missing Mania with The Opportunity, just changing my clothes, I want my body to look better, I've gotten in better shape, changed the hair up a little, what is that next layer? I can tell you it's not going to be a good guy [laughs]. What does it look like? Am I darker? At the same time, I'm like, don't fix something that is not broken, but you always need to evolve somehow, and what does that look like?”
A darker, more heelish Flair back to The Fed? An “Evil Queen,” if you will? Well, that sounds very interesting indeed.
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