Rhea Ripley: The baddest woman on NXT?

Rhea Ripley is clearly the women of the hour at the moment in the WWE. She won together with Candice LeRae the Women’s WarGames match at NXT TakeOver: WarGames against the team of NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler, NXT UK Women’s Champion Kay Lee Ray, Io Shirai and Bianca Belair. In the end, she was the one who pinned Baszler and just one night after that she pinned Sasha Banks for the final elimination to get the victory for NXT at Survivor Series in the women’s match between the three brands. But how was her journey until now and what will be next for her?

Her way

Ripley performed before her time in the WWE for several independent promotions in Japan and Australia before she first appeared on WWE TV in 2017 as part of the first-ever Mae Young Classic Tournament in which she performed as a face. However, she was eliminated in the second round by Dakota Kai.

One year later, she competed in the second Mae Young Classic Tournament, but this time she acted like a heel and reached the semi-finals in which she was eliminated by Io Shirai. However, she also became part of the NXT UK roster and was the first-ever NXT UK Women’s Champion which she held 139 days. She bet Tony Storm in the final of the tournament which’s goal was to determine the first-ever NXT UK Women’s Champion. However, it was also Storm who took away the title from her at NXT UK TakeOver: Blackpool in January 2019.

Ripley was also part of the Women’s Royal Rumble 2019 and defended her NXT UK Women’s Championship at the PPV Evolution in a dark match against Kai.

On August 28, 2019 she appeared on NXT to confront Baszler who is the current NXT Women’s Champion. Nobody was expecting that since Ripley wasn’t announced to be part of the show. Since then she has a feud with Baszler and appears weekly on NXT. These two women also already fought each other in a match on NXT which ended with a DQ win for Baszler since Ripley attacked her with a steel chair. This feud led to the WarGames match in which Baszler and Ripley were the two team captains and Ripley pinned the NXT Women’ Champion for the win for her team. Due to the attack of Kai against Tegan Nox who both were on Ripley’s team, she and LeRae had to fight in a numerous disadvantage what makes the victory even bigger. Just one night later she led as team captain the team of NXT to the victory in the Women’s Survivor Series match. On the first episode of NXT after these two big events, she continued her feud with Baszler.

What’s coming next?

Ripley gets at the moment an incredibly big push. She seems to be the first women for months who could be a real threat to the dominant Baszler. Anyways, Ripley is clearly the face in this feud and it works off as the NXT Universe totally love her.

This feud with Baszler will surely lead to a match for the NXT Women’s Championship within the next weeks and for the first time it looks like the challenger would have a real chance to beat Baszler. Besides that, you have to mention that Ripley is also great with the mic and due to that, I can truly see her becoming the new champ and I’m sure she would do her job great. Considering this, I would love to see her beating Baszler and becoming the new NXT Women’s Champion since the run of Baszler is getting boring and Ripley is just on fire at the moment.