WWE: Bret Hart Joins Growing Mob Against Charlotte, Paige Angle

Bret Hart is the next wrestling legend to sound off against the WWE’s decision to use Reid Flair’s death in the controversial Charlotte-Paige storyline.

Hart recently sat down with Sports Illustrated to discuss his legendary career, and it didn’t take long for interviewer Justin Barrasso to hit on the angle.

Before going into the response from “The Hit Man,” here’s a little refresher on what happened at the most recent Monday Night Raw.

Bret Hart holds a deep respect for Ric Flair, so when news broke that Flair knew nothing of the storyline involving his deceased son, it didn’t sit well with him.

He told Barrasso the angle was “distasteful,” before going into further details.

“How could they not see the slight there? That’s really insensitive to Ric and his family, and I totally sympathize with Ric. You didn’t see them doing that after Jerry Lawler lost his brother. Maybe someone just made a poor judgment call, but I was flabbergasted to see they did that to him. It was totally wrong.”

Bret Hart is not alone. Earlier in the week, WWE reached out to the Inquisitr after an op-ed implying that Charlotte may have been bullied into the angle.

While it certainly cannot be proven that that is the case, it’s hard to imagine that Charlotte would be excited about doing this angle and, as Ric himself noted, not even tell him or her mother about it prior to its airing.

Flair said in comments reported by Cageside Seats that he “cried watching it,” and that he knew nothing about the angle prior to its airing.

The 16-time World Heavyweight Champion also speculated that Charlotte went along with the angle because she “didn’t feel comfortable saying ‘no'” to anything.

WWE rebuked that idea with their official statement, claiming that the notion it would “bully talent into using a sensitive subject of this nature is reprehensible.”

The statement continued,

“Subject matter this personal is only approved as a result of the strong advocacy of the talent themselves. Notwithstanding that, WWE is ultimately responsible for what airs in its programming.”

At the end of the day, Charlotte is a 29-year-old woman, so it isn’t fair to lay all of the angle at WWE’s feet, but it’s pretty clear from the Flair and now Bret Hart interviews that a number of people are dissatisfied with WWE Creative “going there.”

Reid Flair died of an accidental overdose in 2013 after taking a combination of heroin and prescription drugs.

The family has been struggling to come to terms with his loss ever since. In 2014, Charlotte (real name Ashley Elizabeth Fliehr) broke onto the scene and had such a good run with NXT that she was named Pro Wrestling Illustrated‘s “Rookie of the Year.”

Despite having perhaps the greatest professional wrestler of all time as her father, she didn’t walk right into a spot on the main roster.

Instead she honed her craft with WWE’s developmental chapter and has since debuted on the main roster as part of the “Diva’s Revolution,” taking the title from Nikki Bella at Night of Champions.

Naturally, WWE saw the potential in a Charlotte-Paige matchup with both women being considered as two of the best on the roster in the women’s division (and both being former NXT titleholders).

How the storyline ultimately shakes out will reveal itself at Survivor Series this Sunday. But what do you think, readers?

Are Bret Hart and others right to call out the WWE over its decision to use a real-life death to build up a storyline? And did this feud even need to “go there” in order to be compelling?

Sound off in the comments section.

[Image via WWE]