Charlotte Flair says she and her father argue about his social media daily, and that a running part of it is telling him the AI images he sends her are not real. Flair was asked how Ric is doing on Stephanie McMahon’s What’s Your Story, said he’s good, and went straight to the phone.
“The amount that we fight about his social media, I cannot tell you. It is a daily thing,” she said. “And then I’m like, why are you in all caps? Why are you yelling at me in your post?”
She said the arguments usually start with something he has read.
“I’m like, who are you fighting with? I’m just confused,” Flair said. “He’s like, well, I saw it here. And I’m like, seven people follow that website.”
The part she keeps having to correct is images.
“I have to tell him daily, that AI image is not real,” she said. “He has sent me pictures of him and other people, and I’m like, that didn’t happen. That is not real. I told you this happened. I can’t make this up.”
Flair said she picks her moments before commenting on his posts.
“I comment sometimes, but if it’s really bad, I won’t comment because I don’t want to draw attention. Sometimes I just have to make a joke out of it,” she said. She also deals with accounts impersonating him, and reports them when they surface. That is a second front on the same problem, and one she handles rather than him.
The AI part is not a small problem for a man his age with his following. Fabricated images of retired wrestlers circulate constantly, often paired with invented quotes or invented meetings, and they are convincing enough that the person in them can be fooled by his own picture. Charlotte’s account is that she is the one correcting the record, daily, on photographs of her father with people he has never met.
The thing that changed her approach was a conversation with Natalya, who was talking about her own father-figure in the business.
“She was talking about Bret, and I was talking about my dad, and we were just yapping back and forth,” Flair said. “And she was like, you know what, he’s earned that right to have an opinion. I was like, okay, that’s one way to look at it. I’ll just let him have his opinion.”
She was clear about where the posts come from. “I know he is my biggest fan,” she said. When asked whether she wants the login, she said no. “I don’t want that responsibility.”
There was an example of the posting in question days after the interview. On September 2, Ric posted about the AEW World Championship match at All In: London, saying that comparing Will Ospreay and Kenny Omega to himself and Ricky Steamboat was like comparing the Mississippi River to the Pacific Ocean, and telling them to get back to him when they had worked 300 great matches a year and 200 hour-long Broadways. He wrote it in the title case Charlotte was describing. Jim Ross called the post unnecessary on Grilling JR.
Ric is 77, last wrestled in 2022, and has spent the years since posting several times a day about current shows, which is the volume Charlotte is dealing with. Flair also said her parents, divorced since 2005, now spend Thanksgiving and Christmas together.
“They could have saved me 25 years of therapy had we just not gone through all of this,” she said. “But now we all hang out, and it’s great.”
