Rhea Ripley appeared on Mark Andrews’ My Love Letter to Wrestling to discuss a variety of topics, including her path to becoming the WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion.
Ripley won the Women’s Royal Rumble Match in 2023 and defeated Charlotte Flair for the title at WrestleMania 39. Ripley stated that she found out she had won the Rumble the night or two before the event.
“I want to say two nights before or the night before..maybe two nights before. I got a message, ‘How is your cardio?’ What do you mean how is my cardio? I’ve been a manager the last few months. I’m happy to do 20 minutes on the elliptical, but what are we talking about here? It was crazy. When they finally told me, I was like, ‘You’re joking, right?’ I think I could do it because adrenaline is a powerful thing, but at the same time I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it.’ Exactly, go out there and wrestle for an hour to see how it goes,” Ripley stated.
This was a rematch of Flair’s victory over Ripley at WrestleMania 36 for the NXT Women’s Championship. Ripley went on to discuss the rematch.
“I was excited. But I was very nervous, just the fact being that. I haven’t really had many reps in the ring doing actual matches like full-blown long matches for a while because I was out injured and then I came back and we did the Judgment Day stuff and they sort of kept me out of it just a little bit to keep me more of a special sort of thing. So I was, I was really nervous and then I did the Royal Rumble and. I was like, ‘Ok, maybe I can go.’ But then going into Mania I was like, damn, it’s against Charlotte. And like, I know how it is to wrestle Charlotte.
A superb athlete, you know, like, she’s so good at everything and she could just keep going and going and being in the room with her, like many times they were like the fittest times that I’ve ever been. Like it was the fittest Ripley that you could have seen. My cardio was on point and that Rhea Ripley was still, like, struggling to a point. So I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m going to suck.’ There’s nothing worse than having a match ahead where you’re like, oh, ‘I haven’t been doing cardio for the last three months.’ I was like, ‘Man, I hope I can keep up.’ I feel better. Like my confidence was like, man, I think you can do it.
We’ll see how it goes. I remember putting her in my submission, and that submission is so hard for me sometimes because the person’s wiggling and I’m trying to hold on. My arms are tired and they start to slip apart. And I got to try and ride a bicycle with the human and there’s still wriggling, and I gassed myself out. So much, but I remember putting her in it and I had it and she was wriggling and screaming, and I was like. Like, this is so wrenching even more like. ‘Oh my God, this is what it feels like.’ And I was like just hot doped up on adrenaline, like it was a pretty workout or something. I was like, ‘I got this, we’re good,'” Ripley stated.
You can watch the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
