On-screen graphics can really cause problems sometimes. Aside from inaccurate information, bad misspellings, and just getting everything wrong, there’s always the risk of referencing someone on-screen in a way they don’t like. The latest example of that comes from ESPN’s SportsCenter AM (on ESPN2) Tuesday, when WWE’s Charlotte Flair, Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch dropped by to talk about their Triple Threat match that will headline WrestleMania. But while Rousey and Lynch were identified with graphics talking about what they’d accomplished, at least one screen of ESPN’s graphics package for Flair (seen above) only referred to her as “Ric Flair’s daughter.” And while that’s factually correct, it’s easy to understand why Flair was upset about it, and why she later went after ESPN on Twitter Wednesday:
Dear @espn
7x (now 8) WWE Women’s Champion would have been fine.
If you need a more detailed list of my accolades, feel free to reference last year’s Body Issue or one of the many articles about me on your website.
Sincerely,
Daughter of @WWE HOF’er Ric Flair
— Charlotte Flair (@MsCharlotteWWE) March 27, 2019
Here are the graphics for the other women for reference, via Tyler Lauletta of Business Insider:
The whole interview also wasn’t great. As Lauletta points out, the segment ran only four minutes (with a 40-second intro), and it started with a question to Rousey about Conor McGregor retiring from the UFC, then just asked each woman for “your reaction to being a headliner at Wrestlemania”:
It’s a little surprising that ESPN didn’t dedicate more time to this, considering that they had all three women in studio. Plenty of other interviews on various SportsCenter segments run over a commercial break, and doing so here would have allowed for more interesting and in-depth questions. But it’s the graphic that really annoyed Flair, and it’s understandable why she isn’t thrilled with it. Noting that an athlete is related to another famous sports personality is fine, but there’s more to their identity than that, and their own accomplishments should be referenced as well.
