Backstage at Baltimore's WWE Smackdown Live, headliner Ashley Fliehr, 32, weaves through the chilly, serpentine halls of the Royal Farms Arena to find the women's dressing room, opening the door on a cramped, communal space cluttered with luggage, massive costume trunks, and flanked by two bathroom stalls that don't shut. After quick hugs with other female competitors busying themselves for the night's event, Fliehr (who wrestles under the stage name "Charlotte Flair," aka "The Queen") edges into a tight corner, strips out of her floral shift dress, and pulls on black leggings and a fitted tank.

"We all change in front of each other," she says of the cheek-by-jowl, modesty-free digs, adding, contrary to what one might imagine, "there are very few wardrobe malfunctions" in professional wrestling, the ladies of WWE prophylactically taped for the gods.

Not far from the dressing room, the Smackdown makeup alley is a makeshift encampment lit by several industrial lights. Pop music plays from a portable speaker. Long tables are lined with hundreds of brushes, piles of eye shadow, concealer, glitter, boxes upon boxes of fake eyelashes, super-strength glue. No wigs. But plenty of extensions, one gamely being held aloft by wrestler Jimmy Uso as a stylist curls it like fusilli, prepping to weave it into fellow wrestler Becky Lynch's hair. A "princess parking only" sign hangs from a 6-foot-high storage case that holds yet more supplies: diaper wipes, Gas-X, body oil.

Fliehr takes an open seat, sits tall in a director's chair while her longtime makeup artist slathers moisturizer on her cheeks and neck. The Queen's makeup is classic. Liquid liner, maybe a sparkle highlight, a tasteful nude lip. As Fliehr's lashes are curled, she chats with 6-foot-4 Irish wrestler Sheamus while his mohawk is dyed crimson red. He complains to Fliehr about "getting caked" in a prank earlier, a crust of icing still smeared across his expansive bare chest. Fliehr laughs, all the nearby wrestlers and glam squad ribbing him about his having it coming, the vibe easy, intimate.

"We take care of our own around here," says Fliehr as her makeup artist pencils in her brows. "It's an undying bond."

Wrestling has always been a family business. Families own the franchises, families wrestle in them. On every level, from crew to cast, legacy abounds. (The Fliehrs no exception, Ashley the daughter of wrestling legend Ric Flair.) Few people leave the industry once they've been exposed to it, pro wrestling a virus that never exits the blood. Which explains why megastar Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson still returns to the ring, getting his fix on a high unavailable even in the heady air of Hollywood.

Ask around and you discover that wrestling quickly transcends a job, serving for competitors as something of a Buddhist metaphor. You're a player in a story whose outcome you have no control over; one day you're the windshield, the next you're the bug. Your mission is to make the most of what you're given. To say wrestling is a joke is to miss the point. Life is a joke, and wrestling -- equal parts soap opera, kabuki theater and morality play -- is simply a way to revel in the interlaced absurdity and stubborn charm of life. The ring one of the few places on earth where no matter how glaringly human you act, no matter whether you're a winner or a loser, people will still love you.

"My job is healing to me," explains Fliehr, standing up from her chair, face painted, hair rolled. "Charlotte is the woman you want to become. A strong, groundbreaking, independent female in a male-dominated world."

She pauses, a sly smile breaking across her face. "I'm embracing the power in it."

“We put our bodies on the line, and it is a physical sport, not just entertainment. ... I hope that everyone sees the athleticism, the grace, the natural beauty.” Fliehr on appearing in the Body Issue

Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Fliehr, the daughter of 16-time world champion Ric Flair and his then-wife Elizabeth, was an athlete from the jump. As a kid she played multiple sports, her true love gymnastics ("I could do a standing back flip at 13") until she grew too tall and pivoted to volleyball, a sport more aligned with her 5-10, broad-shouldered physiology and one in which, as captain, she led her team to two state championships.

"I was taller than the boys. They called me 'beast,'" Fliehr recalls, sighing. "I had really hairy arms."

According to her father, "Ashley didn't cry as a child." The wrestling idol conditioning his children to "be street smart. Nobody bullied my kids, let me put it like that," he says matter-of-factly. As for daughter Ashley, "You couldn't miss the fact that she was aggressive as a girl. Only one boy could beat her at anything."

Flair recalls Ashley ran a 5:13 mile in the ninth grade, her sprawling athleticism ultimately landing her a full ride to Appalachian State on a volleyball scholarship.

"I spent my whole upbringing in sporting camps," Fliehr says. "I didn't do cotillion."

She first decided to train for the WWE in March 2012, when she was 26, after attending a Hall of Fame ceremony with her father.

"We were all sitting around the table," he remembers. "And [WWE talent relations VP] John Laurinaitis looks at Ashley and says, 'Why aren't you wrestling?' I thought to myself, Oh boy, here we go."

Within three months, Fliehr had signed a developmental contract.

"Did I really want to do that?" she says now. "No. But I was looking for something. I was ..." she pauses, searching for the right words. "Getting away."

Heart

ASHLEY FLIEHR MET the man who would become her husband during a visit home to Charlotte when she was still a freshman at App State. He was a student at UNC-Chapel Hill, and the pair hit it off, their connection intense. When his father passed away shortly after they began dating, Fliehr felt the urge to "be his everything, beck and call, to take care of him even though it had only been a few weeks."

So she did, growing "more and more attached" until, over time, she lost herself entirely, like water into sand.

Fliehr transferred schools so they could be closer. She quit volleyball altogether, forgoing her scholarship, cutting ties with the seat of her identity since she was in grade school, that of a girl with command over her body, that of an athlete.

"The minute I didn't have sports, I was like, 'Who am I?'" Fliehr recalls, adding: "Unless you've been in a codependent relationship, you can't understand. That person is your drug. ... Maybe I was vulnerable because of my dad's life on the road. I don't know."

"I did not set a good example for my kids," Flair candidly acknowledges of his peripatetic leanings -- in the early years, "I'd be gone weeks at a time, driving 3,000 miles for 600 bucks" -- and four divorces. "For somebody that can make friends with anybody, I struggled with being alone."

"I knew my dad had one affair in middle school," Fliehr says. "But I didn't think he was ever going to leave. When he moved out in 2005, everything changed."

Gone were family beach trips to Florida, lazy fishing days and decadent dinners in which Flair would order every appetizer on the menu and hold court for huge groups of friends and relatives. Money became tight, a privation for which Fliehr had no preparation.

"Our finances just got worse and worse," Fliehr remembers, her childhood home eventually foreclosed on, her mother bereft. The dramatic shift in circumstance left Fliehr both resentful of her father and vulnerable to men claiming they could do better.

"I wanted family because mine was so close, and then all of a sudden, we weren't," Fliehr says, swallowing hard. She begins to cry, her shame palpable, if misplaced. "I just have so many regrets," she says of those turbulent, lost years, her voice trailing off. "I don't recognize the person I was then."

Mostly, she doesn't recognize how she was able to disassociate from her body, from the source of her pride, her power. How she allowed an unhealthy relationship to replace every notion she'd ever held about herself, about who she was inside, about what she was capable of. (Their divorce was finalized in 2013.)

"When Ashley quit volleyball, we had the worst argument we ever had," her dad recalls, adding that he tried to talk her out of the decision. "She yelled at me: 'I'm tired of making you happy! Quit living your life vicariously through me!' Stuff like that."

"I said some really mean things to him in a parking lot," Fliehr remembers. "And then he left for WrestleMania."

His absence a hole she could not fill.

"People think Ashley had the world handed to her, that she had this wonderful life as the daughter of Ric Flair," says Sara Amato, Fliehr's first professional wrestling coach. "When, really, she's got a sad story."

When, on that 2012 Hall of Fame night, wrestling was mentioned as a career, for the first time in years Fliehr heard the voice of her past, the voice of that headstrong girl who ran like fire and hurled herself fearlessly into the sky and spiked balls with cannon-like ferocity. And amid the crushing din of her fears and insecurities, Fliehr took a cool, cleansing breath, and listened.

She asked her father if he still believed in her. He said he always had. He always would. And Fliehr, pinned but not defeated, gathered up what was left of the young woman she once knew, packed her bags and uprooted to Florida to become the wrestler called Charlotte Flair.