3 Ups & 11 Downs From WWE Raw (Jan 18)

2. Elevating No One

There is no doubting or denying that Charlotte Flair is one of the most talented wrestlers in WWE today. However, she is far from the best – in fact, she might be one of the worst excellent in-ring performers in the company. Let’s explain…

Flair regularly has good matches against the likes of Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, Bayley, Natalya and Asuka. However, rarely does she elevate someone else to her level. We’ve seen this recently with Flair facing Lacey Evans and Peyton Royce in singles matches, both of which were terrible. Monday’s bout against Royce was just a pedestrian display that had “fast forward” written all over it.

Part of the problem is that Charlotte never is truly “in peril” at any point in a match. Even when she’s supposed to be in trouble during a bout, she very quickly overcomes her attacker and regains control. Peyton never at any point looked like she was going to win the match or even control a segment of it, save for the distraction from Ric Flair and Lacey. Instead, it felt like an extended squash.

Sure, you could argue that Flair is a 12-time former women’s champion, but even John Cena regularly had really good matches with undercard wrestlers, letting them get in a decent amount of offense. And in a women’s division of about a dozen active wrestlers, elevating one of them would be a pretty good idea. Charlotte beating everyone up with relative ease doesn’t help the division.