Ripley thought there was a chance she would miss WrestleMania.
The opening match of WWE WrestleMania 41 night two was a Triple Threat bout that saw IYO SKY successfully defend her Women's World Championship against Bianca Belair and Rhea Ripley.
That match became a topic of conversation during Ripley's appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet. Ripley shared her thought that the Triple Threat has surpassed the match she had with Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 39.
“Honestly, the WrestleMania moment, I always said my match with Charlotte (Flair at WrestleMania 39), because it's everything that I wanted my first ‘Mania to be, because it ended up being the COVID ‘Mania. I didn't get my family, I didn't get the crowd, I didn't get anything that normally goes into a ‘Mania and it was just like, wow, I'm back at the place that I really didn't like going to every day and this is my WrestleMania. So, to then go and face Charlotte again but it being in front of a crowd and I saw my family in the front row, I had all the adrenaline in the world, everything was so perfect and then I beat her for the first time. I won the SmackDown Women's Championship. That was my WrestleMania moment but then now I feel like the match with IYO (SKY) and Bianca (Belair) has triumphed that. I am literally so proud of that match. I love those two so much and going through NXT with them and overcoming things with them and watching them overcome things and watching them grow as performers and then me growing as a performer to get to that point where we could go to WrestleMania and have such a stellar match, and have people chanting, ‘This is awesome’ and us being the opener. I mean, I couldn't ask for anything more. I understand I lost. It doesn't matter at that time. It really didn't because that was IYO’s moment, but we all got a moment from it at the same time."
Leading up to the match, Ripley thought there was a chance she might not be able to compete at WrestleMania 41.
She opened up about lower back issues that have given her trouble since her days in NXT. The issues first came about when she was given a back body drop onto an announce desk.
"Normally, my lower back (is what hurts when I get up in the morning), especially lately. I don't know what's been going on. I think it actually started from the match I had with Raquel (Rodriguez) in NXT where she gave me the back body drop onto the announcement table but we undershot it and I hit the very edge of the table, like right on my lower back and after that, my lower back was, like, just never the same. But, I mean, I do whatever I can to try and make it better. I have our masseuse, Matthew, come over and he works on it, he helps stretch me out and puts my hips back in line pretty much and just fixes all of that and it’s like, thank goodness I do that and thank God for him that he comes over to help because sometimes it gets really bad. I didn't think that I would be able to wrestle at WrestleMania 41.
41, I didn't think I was gonna be able to compete because my back was so bad leading up to it and the two nights beforehand, I got Matthew to come to my room and he worked on me the night before Hall of Fame and the night of Hall of Fame. I was like, ‘I need you to make sure I can walk tomorrow,’ and he worked on me those two nights and it loosened completely just in time for the match and then after the match, it was okay and then slowly, because I've been wrestling more, it slowly tightens up but that's because I just don’t stretch on my own so that's my fault as well. But, I need to be better. Yeah, it gets really bad. I don't know if it's a sciatic thing, or whatnot or just my body in itself, the shape of my body and how I'm put together. I don't know what's going on, but it's something. But it does go down and it definitely revs up sometimes and sometimes it's just bearable…”
Ripley was last in action on WWE programming on the June 9th edition of Monday Night Raw. She was on the losing end of a Queen of the Ring first-round match.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Insight with Chris Van Vliet with an H/T to Fightful for the transcriptions.
