8 Wrestling Angles Which Exploited Real Life Deaths
4. Paige Says Reid Flair "Didn't Have Much Fight"
This was a nightmare for the WWE, all for the sake of cheap babyface sympathy for one character and heel heat for the other.
In the build up to their Survivor Series match in 2015, Paige and Charlotte Flair had the obligatory contract signing segment that ends in a brawl.
Before said brawl could take place though, Paige spewed out an absolute shocker of a line on her opponent, after Flair had used the premature passing of her brother as motivation moments earlier.
Reid Flair sadly passed away two years prior due to a drug overdose, a devastating real-life tragedy for the Fliehr family.
So when Paige wanted to bite back at Charlotte after her promo had come to an end, she told Charlotte that her "little baby brother, he didn't have much fight in him, did he?"
It's one thing to suggest that a dead person might be disappointed in the targeted wrestler, or to use their name to get the opponent fired up, but to insinuate that someone that struggled with, and sadly lost to, drug addiction was weak for losing that battle is beyond a step too far.
WWE understandably received plenty of backlash for it, and making matters worse, Ric Flair, along with his ex-wife and mother of Reid, weren't aware of it. They both came out swinging at the company for using their son's name in such a fashion without even letting them know about it or asking for permission.
It was a PR disaster.