Charlotte Flair was not entirely happy with one of the biggest matches of her WWE career.
2019 saw the WWE women’s division make history as an all-female WrestleMania main event took place for the first time at WrestleMania 35 in New Jersey. The match saw SmackDown Women’s Champion Flair take on Raw Women’s Champion Ronda Rousey and 2019 Royal Rumble winner Becky Lynch in a winner-takes-all match for both championships.
Given Rousey’s star power thanks to her legendary career in UFC, many fans and WWE Hall of Famer Mick Foley have gone on record to say that Rousey played a huge part in making the first-ever match a reality.
While speaking on the Names With Games podcast, Flair agreed with the sentiment that Rousey was largely responsible for making the WrestleMania 35 main event a possibility:
“We would have not main evented WrestleMania had it not been for Ronda (Rousey). Hands down. When she wanted to kind of join what we had already started to build but her star power, her credibility, her outside influence, the audience that she brought. Kudos to her… she just added that legitimacy to what we were trying to do that we didn’t have and she caught on.”
Flair also addressed criticism surrounding Rousey’s in-ring skills, with The Queen defending Rousey’s spot in the match as she already had name value:
“I know that, you know, someone [Becky Lynch] said in her book that she couldn’t wrestle but at the end of the day, it really didn’t matter. She was Ronda and she didn’t need to. She had such an aura to her and really did figure it out.”
Charlotte Flair Not Happy With WrestleMania Match
While the match itself was historic, the build-up and in-ring quality drew a lot of criticism from fans. Ahead of the match, Lynch was given a convoluted storyline where she was forced to apologise to the authority and Vince McMahon inserted Flair into the match with little explanation. Additionally, Flair quickly defeated Asuka on SmackDown to win the Women’s Championship, which many felt to be unnecessary and detrimental to Asuka’s momentum.
In terms of the match itself, the bout came at the end of a very long WrestleMania and had a controversial finish as Rousey’s shoulder was off the mat when she was pinned by Lynch, an element that was never revisited when Rousey returned at the 2022 Royal Rumble. Also during the interview, Flair spoke about the ending of the match and how she does not have fond memories of the 2019 contest:
“I hated our ‘Mania (35) match. She (Ronda Rousey) liked it, I hated it… The ending. It’s all about the story. The match… But the story. The story was insane.”
H/t to Wrestling News.co for the transcriptions.
Featured image: WWE
