The Never-Ending Story of Flair and Lynch
The relationship between Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch is the defining women's wrestling story of the modern era. You can’t tell the history of one without writing a massive chapter on the other. They are the WWE equivalent of Batman and the Joker, forever destined to do this violent dance until they both finally decide to hang up their boots and start a podcast.
But recently, Charlotte has been doing a lot of looking back. And her conclusions are raising some serious eyebrows among those of us who actually suffered through that era of WWE programming.
Speaking about the catalyst for their hottest period—Becky’s infamous heel turn at SummerSlam in 2018—Charlotte dropped a pretty massive admission. She stated flatly that she would change "everything" about how she handled that angle following the turn.
"When I watch it back I'm like, 'What was I thinking?'"
A Crisis of Self-Awareness
It's a wild quote to dissect. You can read the full context on WrestleTalk, but it shows a level of self-awareness that Charlotte hasn't exactly been famous for. But on the flip side, it completely ignores why that feud actually worked in the first place.
It didn't work because the booking was flawless. It worked because the booking was so aggressively tone-deaf that the audience had no choice but to hijack the shows to save their own sanity.
Let's rewind the tape for a second. WWE desperately wanted Charlotte to be the conquering babyface. They wanted Becky to be the bitter, jealous heel who couldn't handle her friend's massive success.
The crowd in Brooklyn rejected it immediately. They cheered Becky for finally snapping. They booed Charlotte for always getting handed the premium spotlight while everyone else scrapped for TV time.
If Charlotte had changed her approach back then—maybe leaning into a heel persona earlier, or adjusting her promos to reflect the actual crowd response—we might never have gotten the organic explosion of "The Man." The friction between what Vince McMahon wanted and what the fans demanded is exactly what created magic. Fixing the mistakes might have actually ruined the outcome.
Sometimes you need a massive trainwreck to build a better track.
Looking Backward vs. Moving Forward
Part of this reflective tour might just be the result of a chaotic schedule and endless media obligations. When you're a top star, you get asked the same questions a thousand times. You also get linked to events you know absolutely nothing about.
Just this week, Charlotte had to clarify that she had zero knowledge of a UFC White House fan fest signing she was supposedly scheduled to attend. The corporate crossover between WWE and UFC under the TKO banner has led to some weirdly crossed wires, and it seems Charlotte was just caught in the middle of one of them.
When your day-to-day schedule is full of miscommunications and corporate obligations, maybe looking backward is just easier than answering questions about the present. And when interviewers inevitably ask about her greatest rival, the answers are starting to sound a lot like a pitch for another match.
In another recent media appearance, she reflected on how the rivalry pushed both of them to be better performers. Then she dropped a line that will either thrill or exhaust you, depending on your current level of fatigue with the main event scene.
"I don't think it's over," Charlotte said. "I think this is just the beginning."
The Threat of Another Rerun
Just the beginning? We are nearly a decade into this dynamic. They have main-evented WrestleMania, traded championships like trading cards, and legitimately disliked each other behind the scenes for a solid two-year stretch.
Calling this "just the beginning" is objectively funny. It sounds like a threat more than a promise.
It's also a little concerning. WWE has a horrible habit of going back to the well instead of digging new ones. Right now, Becky Lynch is busy clarifying her title match status for the upcoming Saturday Night's Main Event.
She has her hands full. The division is actually moving forward without needing the crutch of a Horsewomen reunion. Becky understands the assignment: you focus on the match in front of you.
You don't spend your valuable time fantasy-booking another rerun of a feud from six years ago. SNME is prime real estate, and Becky is doing the work to sell her current storyline, not her past ones.
The Future is Waiting in NXT
Look at the recent NXT call-ups. Jimmy Hart was just praising Sol Ruca in a recent WrestleTalk piece, accurately describing her as a hybrid of Charlotte Flair and Je'von Evans. The future is literally arriving on the main roster every single week.
Sol Ruca can hit a springboard cutter out of nowhere, bringing an athletic dynamic the division desperately needs. Jimmy Hart's comments highlight exactly why the division needs to evolve. When a WWE Hall of Famer goes out of his way to praise a rookie, comparing her favorably to a generational talent like Charlotte and a human highlight reel like Je'von Evans, management needs to listen.
Sol Ruca represents the athletic evolution of the business. The women in NXT right now are doing things that were unimaginable even during the peak of the Four Horsewomen era.
If Charlotte returns and immediately bypasses this new crop of talent to stand face-to-face with Becky Lynch, what message does that send to the locker room? It says that no matter how hard you work, or how many viral clips you produce, your ceiling is firmly capped. The main event is a closed loop, accessible only to those who were already established stars in 2018.
Knowing When to Let Go
We don't need another Charlotte vs. Becky program right now. We really don't. Yes, the matches are usually very good.
Yes, they have undeniable chemistry. But how many times can you repackage the exact same animosity before the crowd stops reacting to it? Charlotte’s admission that the rivalry made them both better is undeniably true.
You can look at their match quality before and after their falling out. The intensity ramped up dramatically. The strikes looked significantly stiffer.
They stopped wrestling like they were hitting marks and started wrestling like they were actively trying to win a real bar fight. Just look at the Last Woman Standing match at Evolution or their chaotic triple threat main event at WrestleMania 35. It brought a grittiness to the women's division that hadn't really existed on the main roster prior to that program.
But the problem with legendary rivalries is knowing when to let them breathe. Stone Cold and The Rock wrestled at three WrestleManias, but they had massive gaps in between where they did completely other things. Charlotte and Becky have felt intrinsically linked for years.
Even when they are on entirely separate brands, their shadows manage to loom over each other. There is also the lingering reality of how WWE books Charlotte. She returns, she gets an immediate title shot, and she either wins it or causes a massive disruption to the planned card.
It is an incredibly predictable cycle. If she decides that she wants to target Becky again, the writers will drop whatever they are doing to make it happen. The rest of the roster just has to wait in line.
Becky is currently trying to navigate the SNME card. She doesn't need a ghost from her past showing up to derail her current momentum. The women's roster is vastly deeper now than it was six years ago.
You have rising stars, established veterans, and a midcard that actually gets consistent television time. Using premium television time on another rehashed Flair/Lynch angle feels like a massive step backward for everyone involved.
It’s completely fair for Charlotte to critique her past performances. Every great wrestler watches tape and cringes at their old stuff. She is a perfectionist inside the ropes, and that trait is exactly what makes her one of the best in-ring talents of her entire generation.
But she shouldn't want to change the past. That messy, convoluted, fan-hijacked storyline built the very foundation of the modern women's division. Let the past stay in the past.
We have enough new faces to keep the division interesting without running back the greatest hits compilation. Feeding the next generation to a returning Charlotte Flair just so she can get back to Becky Lynch would be a massive booking failure.
And as for her claim that this is "just the beginning"? Let's hope that's just a worker working. Because the end of their story should have been written a long time ago.
We don't need a sequel. We don't need a reboot. We just need to move on.
