One of the most successful professional wrestling families in history has to be the Flair family. Ric Flair established himself in the business in 1974, paving the way for his children, David, Reid, and Ashley, now known as "The Queen" Charlotte Flair, to get in the ring themselves. Out of all of Ric's children, Charlotte was the only one to find success in WWE and is now known as one of the greatest female wrestlers of all time.
Charlotte's number of title reigns rivals her father's. The star got into the business via "WWE NXT" and climbed her way up the ranks, winning the NXT Women's Championship, to go on to win theDivas Championship, the WWE Women's title, the "Raw" and "SmackDown" women's championships, and various tag team titles, most recently alongside Alexa Bliss. Her most recent singles title reign came with the SmackDown Women's Championship from late 2022 to 2023. In total, WWE recognizes 14 of Charlotte's world title reigns, those from the main roster, when comparing her to her dad.
Ric is a 16-time world champion, with his gold ranging from his time in the NWA to WCW, to finally, when he joined WWE and first captured theWWF Championship in January 1992, winning the vacant gold by emerging victorious from the Royal Rumble. The accomplishments of the Flair family are vast, as Charlotte picked up her second Royal Rumble victory upon her return from injury in 2025. The pair has a ton of notable WrestleMania appearances between them, as well.
Despite their vast accomplishments, the Flairs have had their tragedies and controversies over the years. From the "Plane Ride From Hell" in May 2002 to Charlotte's recent seemingly real-life feud with Tiffany Stratton ahead of WrestleMania 41, the Flairs are no strangers to headlines.
Ric Flair was not always a multiple-time world champion or even "the stylin', profilin', limousine riding, jet flying, kiss-stealing, wheelin' n' dealin' son of a gun!" that fans know him as today. One of the most tragic aspects of his life is also what may very well have changed the entire direction of RichardFliehr's existence. Ric has always been extremely open about the fact that he was kidnapped at birth, taken from his birth mother without her consent, including on the "Club Shay Shay" podcast back in November 2023. He confirmed to host Shannon Sharpe that he was indeed stolen by human traffickers in Memphis, and his name at birth was Fred Phillips.
He also spoke about his kidnapping on his own podcast, "To Be The Man," where he explainedthat he was taken by Georgia Tann, the Memphis branch operator of the Tennessee Children's Home Society. Tann was later revealed to be a child trafficker who kidnapped thousands of children throughout her career and "sold" the babies to wealthy families. Ric said on his podcast that Tann likely told his birth mother he was stillborn and she needed to sign some papers, which turned out to be documents allowing Ric to be put up for adoption.
The future "Nature Boy" was adopted three weeks after his birth by Richard and Kathleen Fliehr. Ric would grow up in Minnesota, though he would move to Charlotte, North Carolina, at the beginning of his professional wrestling career. Ric told Sharpe his adoptive parents told him he was adopted when he was around five years old, and he never wanted to reach out to find his birth mother or family, though he was contacted by a man claiming to be his biological brother in previous years.
Ric's career, and his life, nearly ended in a serious plane crash in Wilmington, North Carolina, in October 1975. The crash occurred a little over a year after he made his debut in the National Wrestling Alliance in May 1974, and a few months after he won his first singles title, the Mid-Atlantic Television Championship, in February 1975.
The small plane was over its weight limit with Flair and others, including David Crockett, Bob Bruggers, Tim Woods, and Johnny Valentine, on board. The pilot, Joseph Farkas, had trouble getting the plane off the ground due to the weight and dumped fuel from the backup tank to accommodate the weight of the wrestlers. When the aircraft was about 6,000 feet in the air during what was meant to be just a 45-minute flight, the second engine stopped working, and the plane took a nosedive into a crash landing.
Flair broke his back in three places and was told by doctors he would never wrestle again. He narrowly avoided being paralyzed, as he switched seats on the plane with Valentine before takeoff. Valentine would be paralyzed from his own broken back, and the pilot would die of his injuries two months later.
Determined to continue despite the extreme setback, Ric went through a rigorous physical therapy schedule and returned to the ring just three months later to feud with Wahoo McDaniel over the Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight Championship. The crash did, however, force Ric to change up his wrestling style, switching his focus more to grappling than a power-brawling style.
The Plane Ride From Hell, a series of incidents that took place on a WWE-chartered flight in 2002, is to this day one of the most infamous things to happen in the company, and Ric played a part in the debauchery over the Atlantic, heading back to the United States from WWE's European tour.The bad behavior on the plane was brought back to light in 2021 when Vice's documentary series "Dark Side of the Ring" dedicated an episode to it.
Ric was accused of wearing one of his signature robes, without anything else underneath, and sexually harassing female flight attendants while in the air.According to flight attendant Heidi Doyle, Ric at one point walked into the galley, robe open, and pushed her up against a wall and attempted to force her to touch him. The women sued WWE, but the case was settled out of court. With everything else detailed on The Plane Ride From Hell, including Brock Lesnar getting into a fight with Curt Henning, as well as more stories fueled by wrestlers with too much alcohol, Ric's alleged bad behavior flew under the radar until the "Dark Side of the Ring" episode aired in September 2021.
Ric confirmed he had plans to address the fallout from the episode, which included him briefly being removed from WWE's opening sequence ahead of its shows and his merchandise being removed temporarily from WWE Shop.In a social media statementfollowing the episode, Flair denied he sexually assaulted a flight attendant and said that the impact of his drinking had been told "time and time again." He said that he never forced himself on anyone.
One of the most tragic things to happen in the lives of both stars was the death of Reid Flair, Ric's son and Charlotte's younger brother, when he was just 25 years old in March 2013.Reid struggled with addiction and was found dead at a North Carolina hotel. An autopsy revealed he died of a drug overdose.
Reid wanted to follow in the footsteps of his father. He was an amateur wrestler early in life who received numerous awards. He wrestled in WCW alongside his dad, for the first time when he was just 10 years old, and the second when he was 12. During his second WCW match, he and Ric lost to David Flair, Reid's half-brother, and Vince Russo.
He began training for a professional wrestling career in 2008 with Harley Race. He made his professional debut that year, teaming alongside David to defeat The Nasty Boys in a match where Hulk Hogan served as the special guest referee. Reid was also able to secure a spot in WWE's developmental system, though he was let go before he could accomplish much in the company due to his personal struggles. During Ric's "30 for 30" ESPN special, Paul "Triple H" Levesque revealed Reid failed two drug tests. The younger Flairstarted training with All Japan Pro Wrestling after leaving WWE in 2013.
Charlotte started her own professional wrestling career right before her brother's passing and has been open about wrestling being more Reid's dream, initially, than her own. She wrote in "The Players Tribune" that "being a Flair" wasn't her goal, and Reid was the one following in her father's footsteps. Charlotte said she just wanted to be there for her brother.Each year, the Flairs pay tribute to Reid on his birthday, with Charlotte sharing a photo of her brother in his wrestling gear on what would have been his 37th birthday.
The Flair family has also had their fair share of legal trouble, with Charlotte once being arrested during an altercation involving her ex-husband, Riki Johnson, where Ric was also present, and bloodied during the fight. The incident occurred back in 2010 and ended with Charlotte, who was 22 years old at the time, being hit with a Taser and charged with assault on a law enforcement officer and resisting arrest.
According to local television station ABC11 and Chapel Hill police, a neighbor called for help when they heard commotion in the parking lot of their North Carolina apartment complex. When police arrived, they found Ric, Charlotte, and Johnson. Sources told the TV station that the three were involved in a fight that left Ric bruised and bloodied. Ric didn't file charges, but Charlotte was accused of kicking an officer, and police confirmed a Taser gun was used on her.
In Ric and Charlotte's memoir, titled "Second Nature," Charlotte wrote that her marriage to Johnson was full of physical and verbal abuse, and she was attempting to play peacekeeper between her then-husband and father during the 2010 incident. The pair were divorced in 2011, after just a year of marriage, prior to Charlotte breaking out in WWE.
Following Charlotte's accusations of abuse in the book, Johnson filed a lawsuit in October 2018 against the Flairs and WWE. Johnson alleged in the lawsuit that Charlotte was "an out of control aggressor" during the 2010 incident and that she and Ric wrote multiple falsehoods about him in their book. He sued them for $5.5 million, but the case was settled out of court in April 2019.
Two of the Four Horsewomen of WWE, Becky Lynch and Charlotte, rekindled their fractured friendship after competing on the same Survivor Series team back in 2023, even appearing together at the following press conference, but their relationship wasn't always the best after coming up together in "WWE NXT."
Charlotte and Lynch were once thick as thieves, even referring to themselves as "Thelma and Louise," but at one point, as both their successes started to grow in the cut-throat industry, they had a falling out.Lynch wrote in her 2024 memoir that the fracture began after their triple threat match at SummerSlam 2018 involving Carmella. Lynch turned heel that night and gave Charlotte a beat-down "The Queen" knew was coming, but Lynch wrote that things were awkward backstage after.
Lynch's ex-boyfriend Jeff Dye, who she was dating in 2018, said on "Wrestling with Freddie" that Charlotte had difficulties accepting Lynch's ascent to stardom as "The Man." Charlotte spoke on "Broken Skull Sessions" and admitted that the women clashed for the top spot in the company, saying they were "two alphas" who didn't see eye to eye.
The tension came to a head on an October 2021 episode of "SmackDown" during a segment where the women were meant to swap belts after they, both as champions, were drafted to different brands. Both women went off script, with Charlotte dropping her belt to the mat for Lynch to pick up and Lynch throwing her belt at "The Queen." The women had a heated backstage altercation following the segment, though it didn't become physical.
Throughout the women's tension, Ric also had heat with Lynch over "The Man" trademark. Lynch was using the name in WWE, which Ric wasn't happy about, believing it played too closely off his "To Be The Man, You Gotta Beat The Man" catchphrase.
Ric's various health issues he suffered throughout his life came to a head in 2017 whenhe went to the hospital with a stomachache, believing it to be a case of food poisoning. His body began to shut down, and he was sent to the intensive care unit, where he was placed in a coma. Flair's heart started to fail, and his kidneys shut down, and he was put on dialysis and given a pacemaker. Ric's fiance at the time, Wendy Barlow, told ESPN that she was told he had only a 20 percent chance of living.Rictold the outlet that his issues were related to alcoholism, and he also had to go through detox during the near-death experience.
"The Nature Boy" has since recovered from his massive organ failures of 2017, but his health issues didn't stop there. He revealed in an interview in August 2022 that during what was touted as his last match, a tag match alongside former son-in-law Andrade, he passed out twice due to dehydration. He revealed in another interview two years later that he actually suffered a heart attack during the match. He said doctors didn't discover the fact until the years following the bout.
While Charlotte has not had the major health issues her father has suffered, she recently made it through a devastating knee injury."The Queen" tore her ACL, MCL, and meniscus during a "SmackDown" match at the end of 2023 that kept her on the sideline throughout the entirety of 2024. She has been open about how the injury affected her mentally, including in her "PlayersTribune" article.
Charlotte would make a triumphant return from injury at the 2025 Royal Rumble, entering at #27. She would go on to win the match, the second of her career, and would go on to WrestleMania 41.
The Flair family's most recent controversy, though some fans believe it was manufactured for content for WWE's "Unreal" series on Netflix, came when Charlotte and WWE Women's Champion Tiffany Stratton got into a feud that resulted in a very personal, off-script promo on "WWE SmackDown." Flair chose Stratton as the champion she would challenge at WrestleMania 41 after her Rumble victory. Stratton had previously said that Charlotte was one of her dream opponents.
The feud traveled out of storyline and into reality on an April episode of "SmackDown" when the women met face-to-face in the ring with commentator Wade Barrett between them to prevent any physicality. The promo went off script quickly, and reports about who started the drama were varied, but it was possibly when Flair started with a line about being a "nepo queen" when Stratton compared her to her father. Charlotte was also rattled by the crowd and seemed to give up on the segment entirely when she told Stratton she could have the last word. Stratton then mentioned Charlotte's recent divorce and called her "0-3" in marriages before rolling out of the ring to avoid possibly getting hit. As the champion made her way up the ramp, Charlotte shouted at her that Stratton's boyfriend, fellow WWE star Ludwig Kaiser, was in her DMs.
Ricaddressed the promo and said he hates when WWE uses him in Charlotte's storylines. Charlotte herself addressed what happened in an article with "The Players Tribune." She wrote about her marriage to former fellow WWE star Andrade dissolving and her struggles with fertility. She also wrote that Stratton's "0-3 in marriages" line "rocked her" legitimately and said her reaction to the line was as real as it gets, because in her mind, her character, Charlotte, had never been divorced like Ashley.
