Rhea Ripley Credits AEW Star For Striking Change In Attitude
Rhea Ripley has acknowledged a former WWE superstar who now works for AEW for helping her.
For the second year in a row, the current WWE Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley will be in a huge championship match at WrestleMania.
At WrestleMania 39, Rhea Ripley faced Charlotte Flair in a match that some people consider one of the best women’s matches in WWE history. Ripley went into the match with a lot of momentum as the Royal Rumble winner and was too much for “The Queen” as Ripley got the big win to become the Smackdown Women’s Champion.
In about one month, Ripley will defend the newly renamed Women’s World Title against Women’s Elimination Chamber match winner Becky Lynch at WrestleMania 40. It’s a match that WWE has been building for a full year and the fans are anticipating it heavily.
While speaking to the BWGS Pod in Australia recently, Ripley recalled getting career advice from AEW’s Ruby Soho, who worked for WWE as Ruby Riott and is a woman has been in pro wrestling longer than Ripley.
“The Rhea Ripley that we all saw in the first Mae Young Classic, I was 20. I was so young and I just wanted to please everyone. I was so scared of doing anything different or anything that I thought was different. But the Rhea Ripley you see today is what I was on the inside. I didn’t let it out because I felt like I had to fit a specific mold to be in the WWE. It was a time where females weren’t big and bulky, they didn’t have tattoos.”
“They all had the long hair and I’m glad for someone like — I don’t actually give her enough credit. But Ruby Riott, she was the first one that I really looked at and was like, wow, she’s covered in tattoos. She’s got short hair, she looks super cool and I remember tagging with her quite a few times on the coconut shows which are like the non-televised (shows) and she helped me just bring out that side of me that was me and a lot of other people did too but, I also had to sit down with myself at a specific time and just be like, yo, wake up. Stop being fake.”
“I hate fake people and I was one and I was like, just don’t care what anyone thinks about you. If they don’t like you, they don’t deserve to be in your life. So I just kind of decided to be myself. I cut my hair short. At the time, we had to get tattoos approved (she laughed). I mean, we still sort of do. I just get away with it… so I wore pants as a way to get leg sleeves. That was my little loophole.”
How Did Rhea Ripley Start Using The Riptide?
Every great wrestler has a signature finishing move that they use to win matches. In Ripley’s case, she has the Riptide slam where she lifts her opponent above her head and slams her into the mat.
For the Riptide, Ripley credits another former WWE superstar who now wrestles as Shane Haste, who helped her come up with the Riptide move.
“Shane Haste actually helped me with this one (Riptide finisher). Another Aussie boy… I think he was the one that actually found it and he showed me. He’s like, ‘We should try this’ and I remember going and we had this squishy ring at the Performance Center. It was legit like a pillow. It was fantastic… I would much rather land on that than the black little mats on the floor that I used to learn on.
“But I remember going there with Shane and Tegan Nox and just trying it over and over and over again and just trying to perfect it and it’s come a long way because even in NXT U.K., I used to do it and sit down with it and that hurts. I don’t like the feeling of that on my butt to be completely honest, and then I started doing it and going down to my knees and my knees aren’t great anyway but it’s so much better than falling on your ass over and over again.”