Charlotte Flair still eyeing her father's record despite John Cena win

WWE star Charlotte Flair recently shared that she was still eyeing Ric Flair's title record despite John Cena breaking it earlier this year. The Cenation Leader captured the Undisputed WWE Championship from Cody Rhodes in the main event of WrestleMania 41 to break Ric Flair's legendary record.

Speaking with Rick Ucchino of Sports Illustrated's The TakeDown, Flair discussed Cena breaking her father's record by becoming a major champion for the 17th time. Flair noted that Cena was the right person to break the record, and her father was likely very proud of him. She then admitted that she still wanted to surpass Ric Flair's number of title reigns and that she was in competition with her father, not John Cena.

“The first part of my career, I really didn't think about it. Now that I'm so close, I don’t think for me it's about tying or breaking John, but… could I have the opportunity to tie or break my father. The competition was with him, not necessarily tied to Cena," she said. [H/T: Sports Illustrated]

Cody Rhodes won the King of the Ring Tournament to earn a shot at John Cena's title at WWE SummerSlam 2025 in August.

Vince Russo claims Charlotte Flair's WWE return has been a miss so far

Former WWE writer Vince Russo believes that Charlotte Flair's return to the ring has been a failure so far.

Charlotte Flair missed all of 2024 due to a knee injury and returned at Royal Rumble 2025. She won the Women's Royal Rumble match but came up short in her WWE Women's Championship match against Tiffany Stratton at WrestleMania 41.

Speaking on a recent episode of Sportskeeda Wrestling's Legion of RAW show, Russo praised Charlotte Flair for the work she put in to make it back to the ring. However, he stated that it had not worked so far, and the company had not handled her return properly.

"This whole handling of Charlotte is such a swing and a miss. During her whole rehab, she’s putting up posts on Instagram of her being King Kong. The stuff she was doing, you could see the pain in her face, the pushing the weight and putting the leg brace on and running. I felt them and thought that girl was a beast. I give her all the credit in the world. You could tell how hard she wanted to come back," he said.

It will be fascinating to see what the company has in store for Charlotte Flair moving forward on SmackDown.