Last Friday’s WWE SmackDown took an unexpected turn when the promo between Charlotte Flair and Women’s Champion Tiffany Stratton reportedly went off the script rails. New details have emerged on the segment that got very real.
The April 4th segment was supposed to further the build towards their upcoming title match at WrestleMania 41. Instead, it went personal and got many reactions from fans and backstage sources. Several lines were later removed from WWE’s social media and YouTube videos — so how much of the promo was planned?
After Flair’s Royal Rumble win, both wrestlers have been featured heavily in the build-up to WrestleMania, with Stratton establishing herself as a main event player and Flair returning from injury in time for a title push. However, it seems like Charlotte has gotten the best of Stratton in ways that may not have been planned.
According to WrestleVotes, Flair and Tiffany Stratton delivered “very little of what was in the rundown for them” and “went off script quite a bit”. The biggest moment was when Stratton brought up Flair’s past marriages:
“When it’s all said and done, you’re going to be just like you are outside of the ring, alone! What is that record, like 0–3?” Flair responded quickly: “Is that why Kaiser’s in my DMs?”
Latest backstage news on awkward Tiffany Stratton and Charlotte Flair segment from Smackdown
Flair’s response was at Tiffany Stratton’s real-life boyfriend, WWE star Ludwig Kaiser. He later posted a video on X dismissing the comment with a clip of Shawn Michaels saying, “Please do not flatter yourself.”
Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful confirmed that everyone he spoke to backstage thought the segment went off the rails. Mike Johnson of PWInsider added even more details to some of the backstage opinions of Stratton’s strong words.
“The belief among those we’ve spoken with this morning is that Stratton fired away on Flair in retaliation for how Flair ‘ate her up’ on a previous face-to-face segment,” Johnson wrote. “Some we spoke with felt Stratton stood up for herself in a way that put the spotlight back on her. While others felt that the segment going awry towards the end didn’t help anyone.
“Several we spoke to also noted that Flair was obviously thrown by the crowd, which allowed Stratton’s shots to hit even harder.”
After the segment, WWE removed the part about Flair’s divorces from their official X and YouTube posts. But as of this writing, the USA Network version of the clip is still unedited.
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