In a way, she uses Charlotte (real name: Ashley) to mask her insecurities, especially when she has to go out there in the middle of a ring and talk to an entire arena, which still makes her stomach turn. “I can just hide it by being over-confident.”

So you can imagine her shock when WWE informed her that she would be leaving NXT for the main roster as a good guy instead. “You can’t tell the crowd, ‘I’m ‘genetically superior’ and you need to like me.’ I started second guessing my entrance as I was doing it. Like, what do I do with my hands? Do I smile? Do I not smile? Are the fans going to be like, ‘Is she trying to be cocky? Is she trying not to be cocky? Are we supposed to like her?’ You could see, I wore the stress on my face.”

Perhaps sensing that fans weren’t rallying behind Charlotte as a good guy like they had hoped, the decision was made to pair her up full time with quite possibly the most beloved man in all of pro wrestling—her father, Ric Flair. As excited as she was to work with her dad, deep down, she knew that would only muddle her character more. “I’m trying to be a babyface and they’re like, ‘The father-daughter relationship is relatable!’ No, it’s not. He’s Ric Flair and I’m Charlotte.” By that she means that they’re Rolex wearing, diamond ring wearing, kiss stealing, wheeling dealing, limousine riding, jet-flying son of a guns! “They’re not relatable. No one can relate to that!”

Photographs by Roger Kisby

Charlotte never wanted to be a wrestler growing up. She was too preoccupied winning national championships in cheerleading and State volleyball titles to even think about following in her father’s footsteps. Besides, she saw the hardships that her older brother David went through when he was thrown on television without any proper training precisely because he was Ric Flair’s kid. “I was like, why would I want to be a part of that? Plus looking at the women there, they were models and I played basketball, volleyball, diving, track. I wasn’t walking runways or anything.” Yet even though she never had any real desire to be on TV, that’s exactly where she seemed to find herself time and time again. If you dig deep enough on YouTube, you can see her in the ring with her father on WCW Nitro back in the late ‘90s. There she is again, giving Vince Russo the side-eye during an angle where Russo broke into the Flair home and referred to her as “the demon child.” And again, at WrestleMania in 2008, openly crying in the front row after her father’s epic retirement match against Shawn Michaels.

It wasn’t until she attended WrestleMania XXVIII in Miami for the induction of her father as a member of the Four Horsemen into the WWE Hall of Fame that she was convinced to enter the family business. Her younger brother Reid, who was already pursuing a career as a professional wrestler, desperately wanted his sister to get in on the action. For most of their lives, they had done everything together. “We went to the same school, same friends, same teachers. We grew up in Charlotte together.” At the time, Charlotte was working as a personal trainer back in North Carolina, “but Reid was like, ‘You’ve got to do this. Do it, do it, do it. We’ll be there together.’ That was the idea: For me to get to WWE and him to meet me.”

Charlotte was signed to a developmental deal one month later and reported to FCW, which was rebranded into NXT soon thereafter. It didn’t take long for her to realize just how difficult it would be to step out from behind her father’s shadow. “I knew my dad was famous, but I didn’t realize what he meant to this industry.” But for all the pressure Charlotte faced, it paled in comparison to what Reid must have felt wrestling in Japan, hoping for a shot of his own in WWE. “My little brother wanted to be my dad. I mean, idolized my dad. And I saw the struggle and what it was like for him. Reid was great, but as a young kid growing up and wanting to be Ric Flair—I know my pressures. I deal with it on a daily basis. And I don’t want to say it’s different because I’m a girl, because I’ve worked really hard, but to be a male in this industry and live up to being Ric Flair? I don’t know how he could have done it. You’re damned if you do, you’re damned if you don’t.”