Second Nature

by Ric Flair

  This was another moment where appearances were deceiving. As the daughter of Ric Flair, most people thought I knew about the sports-entertainment industry. No. I knew about my dad’s career. I knew that I loved watching him perform, and I knew certain people from the business on a personal level. Reider was different. This was what he wanted to do from day one. He could recite specific interviews from our dad’s career. He could describe matches with dates, the venues, and outcomes. What could I do in WWE?

  All I knew was that this could be my chance. In the back of my mind and in my most private thoughts, it was the chance I had been waiting for. The opportunity that in my most heartfelt prayers I had asked God for. The chance that could save my life.

  I thought that if I did this, it would ensure that Reider could pursue his dream. The one thing he always wanted to do with his life could now be the thing that saved it, and I could be part of it. I could be with him every step of the way, like what his living with me in Charlotte was supposed to be. He looked so excited at the possibility that this could happen. I did the only thing there was left to do. I said, “Yes.”

  About a week later, I called Triple H. I always knew Hunter as someone my dad trusted, someone he confided in a great deal. Triple H has been close to our family since I was in high school. I was not nervous about speaking with him; I was nervous about the subject of our conversation.

  I told Hunter about my dinner with John Laurinaitis in Miami. He was supportive, but he asked me questions and wanted to make sure I knew what to expect.4 One of the things he said was that a door was opening for me, but that didn’t mean that it was going to open for my brother at the same time. I understood that. He explained that he was in the midst of a complete overhaul of WWE’s talent development program. He said I’d relocate to Tampa to begin training but that soon after, everything would move to Orlando and something called the WWE Performance Center.

  He said I’d receive a call from someone on his team named Canyon, and he’d go over the details with me. As we finished our conversation, I let Hunter know that I realized the importance of this opportunity, how much it meant to me, and that I’d show him how hard I was going to work. There was no turning back.

  A few days later, I spoke with Canyon. He explained that I was the first talent he was going to hire. Canyon told me the date I needed to report, what I could expect on the first day, and how I’d receive help finding a place to live. He also said not to expect any handouts or special treatment because of who my dad was. I understood that. He didn’t say it in a rude way. I knew about kids with relatives in the business, their sense of entitlement, and how they carried themselves. I was disappointed that someone had the same idea about me based on one brief phone call.

  I had an entire industry to learn. I knew that it was so multifaceted that the more I learned, the more I’d need to learn. Every second of the day, I thought about the journey I was going to take. I was confident in one thing: when it came to cardiovascular training, they’d be lucky if any of the girls there could keep up with me.

  I wrapped up my work at Ciarla Fitness and said my emotional goodbyes to my boss, colleagues, and clients. They became my friends and gave me the courage to consider doing this. For the first time, I would not live in North Carolina. Tampa was about an eight-and-a-half-hour drive from Charlotte and about an hour and a half by plane. I was leaving my family behind. Riki was going to drive us down there. He’d make the move once I was settled in and look for work.

  Before I packed my U-Haul and hit the road to the Sunshine State, there was something I needed to do: hit the ring.

  My dad and Reider took me to HighSpots training facility in Charlotte. That’s where my brother and Richie Steamboat trained under George South. Former WCW superstar Lodi would be there working out with us. I remember the walls of the facility lined with wrestling action figures in their packaging.

  This was a two-day crash course for me to become familiar with the fundamentals, but first, in classic Flair fashion, my dad emphasized cardiovascular conditioning. After all the years of hearing him tell stories about Verne Gagne’s training sessions that began every day with five hundred free squats, it was my turn. Before I set foot in the ring, that’s what I did—and he did them with me. My dad did them for the first time in a barn in Minnesota. I did them in a warehouse in North Carolina. What was funny was that my dad did five hundred free squats and then picked up his coffee and drank it like it was no big deal.

  I remember doing forward rolls diagonally across the ring from corner to corner in sets of ten. My dad and Reider counted off for me. I can still hear my brother clapping and saying, “Good. Good job. Keep going, Ash. You’re halfway there. Let’s go. Good.” I got to the seventh one, and my dad said, “Nope. That was terrible. Start again. Start over from six.” I went back in the corner and started again. My dad said, “Okay, eight. That was good. Nine. Ten. Good, that’s how you finish.” After that, he and Reider showed me how to run the ropes and lock up with my opponent in the ring.

  The second day, I began the session with another five hundred free squats and more conditioning drills. I worked on learning how to balance on the top rope and flip from it. In wrestling, it’s called a moonsault. It took me a few tries to get comfortable with being on the top rope and having my back to the ring. The first couple of attempts, I flipped off the top rope and fell! The next time, I flipped off the top rope and landed on my feet in the center of the ring—I nailed it! I had a long way to go. It felt good to get that technique down.

  After that, I practiced doing what I learned was called a double handspring elbow. I was hesitant because I didn’t want to land in the corner on Lodi with all my momentum. Before I went for it, my dad said, “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt Lodi. I’ll take his spot.” And Lodi said, “Don’t worry, you won’t hurt me. C’mon.” I did the two flips across the ring and landed the move on him in the corner. He was fine. I knew that once I got to FCW, I’d be able to learn how to use my gymnastics and cheerleading balance skills.

  I arrived in Tampa a couple of days before I was due to report. I was scared to death driving to the training facility. I tried to anticipate what this journey had in store for me. I knew I had to work hard, treat everyone well, and earn people’s respect. I pulled into the parking lot and walked to the door. I did the only things left to do: open it, walk through, and be ready for anything. This was it.

  14

  A WHOLE NEW WORLD

  I had to learn a new sport, a new business, and a new culture.

  March 2013

  Walking into FCW for the first time that July was like being the new kid in school, but with a twist—I didn’t know anyone, though it felt like everyone knew me.

  Despite the hope that my identity would be kept secret, by the time I arrived in Tampa, everyone knew I was Ric Flair’s daughter. I didn’t realize that when I signed my WWE developmental contract, sports-entertainment media outlets would post that as a story. I didn’t know sports entertainment had media outlets. Anyone who didn’t see those posts figured it out too. Introducing myself to the few people who didn’t recognize me by my first name only served as temporary relief.

  I had a high mountain to climb. I had to prove that I belonged. I had to earn people’s respect. Three things made that more challenging: I was Ric Flair’s daughter; I was the only person there who did not have a tryout; and I didn’t have any wrestling experience. Everyone knew that. But they didn’t know I had confidence in one thing: my conditioning.

  One of my vividest memories about my first day at FCW was doing conditioning drills. I remembered what Canyon told me about not expecting a handout. When it was time to fall in line for the drills, I was determined to show that, yes, Ric Flair is my dad, I had a lot to learn, but I wouldn’t be outlasted when it came to conditioning.

  Men and women did these drills together. Everyone was in good shape. I could hear the whistle being blown to start, stop, drop to the mat, and pop back up, the sound of
a voice counting us down. One by one, I saw people around me go to the side of the room. The number dwindled until, finally, I was the last person standing.

  I wanted everyone—the trainers and trainees—to know that while this was a new area for me, I was a well-conditioned athlete who took this seriously. I was not the stereotypical generational kid who thought she could coast because of her last name. I had a long way to go to prove that. I felt that outlasting everyone in those drills was an important first step.

  During my first few weeks in Tampa, it seemed like the more questions I asked, the more questions I needed to have answered. One thing I knew right from the start was that I loved what I was doing! I drove out of FCW’s parking lot one night and asked myself, Why did I wait so long to do this?

  As recruits came in, people recognized one another from company tryouts or crossing paths with each other on the independent wrestling circuit. WWE talent scouts traveled the world and invited people to try out, or they signed talent to come to Tampa to train. One day, I looked around and thought, Besides some of the trainers, I’m the only one here who’s appeared on WCW TV.

  When I started in FCW, I immediately enjoyed living in the warm Florida sun every day, even in the notoriously hot summer. Inside the training facility, it was like winter. All I got were a lot of cold shoulders. It was like I had the plague. When I started, with the exceptions of my trainers, almost no one spoke to me.1

  As an athlete, I was comfortable getting to know people through training sessions, practices, and playing in games, but this was different. One of the things I realized after my first couple of days in FCW was that there was a wrestling culture that I needed to learn.

  There was an etiquette that had to be followed every day. This was to show your respect for the people you trained with, respect for the people who were training you, and respect for the business.

  Things that will always stick out in my mind include showing up to the facility an hour before start time to prepare for that day’s session; once you’re there and before you start, you must shake everyone’s hand. You repeated that when you left for the day. At live events, everyone helped set up the ring; during the show, everyone watched what was happening in the ring on the monitor backstage; you had to watch the matches before yours. Everyone stayed until the end of the show and helped take the ring down. I felt like every step I took, I made a mistake.

  My education continued. You had to know everyone’s ring name, what their finishing move was called, and what the move actually was.

  There was a vocabulary I needed to learn—certain words that wrestlers used with one another that, to the common person, have a different meaning. When spoken fluently in a conversation, it’s like its own language, and downloads of Berlitz courses to listen to in the car or on my iPod while I ran were not available for purchase.

  I’m sure there were people at the training facility who thought, She must know all of this already. She’s Ric Flair’s daughter. She’s been around this business her whole life. She knows people like Arn Anderson, Dusty Rhodes, Ricky Steamboat, and Triple H. Nope. Not even close. Yes, I knew those people on a personal basis. That had nothing to do with the work I was doing.

  As a child and a young adult, people didn’t talk to us using terminology that the wrestlers used. I never heard those terms backstage and never heard them from my dad. If I saw someone with him, I shook his or her hand, because that’s how my parents raised us. While making my way through a larger-than-life cast of characters, I had no idea that there was an entire culture based on what they did, how they did it, and what they said. I just said, “Hello.”

  Something else I learned right away was that trainees had jobs outside of training. I took tickets when fans entered FCW shows, I sold programs, and I got my degree in guerilla marketing when I worked on a “street team.”

  Street teams drove to different towns in Florida and put posters in business windows and on telephone poles to advertise FCW live events. The first thing we did on our day off was go to the print shop and pick up a thousand posters.

  Since I was a newer trainee, let’s just say we didn’t drive around Tampa. We’d go to Miami, which was almost a 600-mile round trip; Fort Pierce, which was a little more than 300 miles; Immokalee was almost 320 miles total; and Jacksonville, just about 400 miles there and back. Another rule I learned was that you never fall asleep in your car pool when someone else was driving.

  Street team was a long day, but it was what you made of it. I thought it was fun. You’re in a car, listening to music, and putting posters up. And I knew it was all part of paying dues. It was a lot better than some of the stories my dad told us when we were kids.2

  There were different classes throughout the day. The girls and the guys trained together. Sometimes there were thirty of us in a class. We’d get seven or eight minutes in the ring. I’d start shaking every time trainer Norman Smiley called me to get in the ring with him. I was very nervous in front of everyone. I had stage fright at the thought of people watching me while I was trying to learn what I was supposed to do.3

  I never had an issue playing sports in front of an audience. There would be thousands of people in a gym during national tournaments, and reporters and photographers covering our games. But this was different.

  It was hard for me to abandon my instincts as a gymnast who was taught to be graceful. It took me months to feel comfortable running the ropes and not look so methodical doing it. Getting rope burn on my back was definitely not fun. I was obsessed with my technique. Was it good enough? Was my form where it needed to be? It was difficult for me to let go and be free-flowing with my movements. I was with people who may have been new to WWE, but they knew their way around a ring.

  The women who were training were Paige, Emma, Summer Rae, Vickie and Eddie Guerrero’s daughter Shaul, Audrey Marie, Ivelisse, Anya, Buggy Nova, and Alicia Fox’s sister, Christina.

  On the male side, trainees included Richie Steamboat, Seth Rollins, Cesaro, Dean Ambrose, and Leakee, who became Roman Reigns.

  Almost everyone had experience wrestling on the independent scene. For the women, Paige and Emma were standouts. For the guys, Richie Steamboat and Seth Rollins were touted for their matches at FCW live events and on the FCW TV program that aired in Tampa every week.

  I knew that many of the trainees were annoyed because I didn’t have a tryout match, and I hadn’t been selected by one of the trainers. I understood that. In the college and professional sports world, I would be considered a walk-on. It didn’t work that way here.

  Some of the first people who befriended me were Anya (we had our physical on the same day), Emma, Dolph Ziggler’s brother Briley Pierce, Mike Dalton, and Mojo Rawley. I remember talking to them about my ring name.

  I didn’t know what I wanted my ring name to be. I wrote down names that sounded like they were from a soap opera: Ella Reid, Charlotte, Ryan. I chose Elizabeth because it’s my mom’s name and my middle name. When that was turned down, I didn’t consider the reason for rejection as a possibility—Miss Elizabeth. It was decided that I was going to be Charlotte. Now that I had a name, where was I going to be from?

  For a while, I was Charlotte from Charlotte. Was that a joke? It was announced as Charlotte, North Carolina—not from the Queen City like it is today. It reminded me of the scene in Austin Powers when Austin’s at the blackjack table and says to Number Two, “Allow myself to introduce … myself.” I don’t think anyone really put a lot of time into it.

  I thought I had built a good rapport with the trainers. They always treated me well. There was a brief period when I felt a little lost because I wasn’t anyone’s signee. No one stamped their name on me after seeing me perform in the ring. No one invited me to a tryout after watching footage of me. I understood that. It’s the scout’s job to find, hire, and develop talent, to get them ready for the next level: the WWE main roster. I had to work harder to be noticed, although with the new job assignment for FCW shows, being noticed would n
o longer be a concern.

  When I was told I was going to be a ring announcer, I thought someone was playing a joke on me. I thought, Well, this is one way to deal with stage fright.

  I was terrified when I was told I’d start out in front of the camera, in front of an audience, and stand in the middle of the ring as the ring announcer for FCW. The crowds usually totaled thirty to fifty people. They were very loyal fans, and they knew I was Ric Flair’s daughter. Usually at least once a show I’d hear “WOOOOO!” from the crowd. I was so nervous. I got compliments on my ring announcing, but I thought I was terrible. It’s tougher than it looks.

  I started to make a life for myself in Florida. The developmental program moved from Tampa to Orlando. Riki drove down for a few weekends to visit me. Overall, I became less focused on catering to Riki. I still sent text messages and called when we were apart, but it was not with the same sense of urgency or frequency.

  After a few months of living apart, Riki decided to change the plan: he was not moving to Florida. Instead, he chose to move to Mississippi so he could be closer to his family. Part of me was upset about this. He was my husband. Even though I hadn’t felt like I was in a loving relationship for a very long time, a small part of me still wanted it to work.

  That fall, Riki’s brother played in a college football game in Dallas. I told him I didn’t want us to go. I was concerned that his being in that type of environment would trigger a drug and alcohol relapse. Riki prided himself on being defiant. He insisted on going to the game. I pleaded with his mother to speak with him. She told me that I needed to let her son do what he wanted to do. Same old song: denial. Given Riki’s history, I couldn’t believe that she could still could not bring herself to acknowledge this problem. I wasn’t working at FCW, so I went with him.

  From the moment we were at the stadium, he started drinking and became belligerent. We went to a fast food restaurant after the game and Riki caused a scene while we were inside, and then took a taxi back to the hotel. In the hotel room, he became hostile and destructive, and he started breaking things. I was in the hallway with his mother and said, “Now do you see? This is what I’ve been dealing with.”