5 Ups & 5 Downs From WWE WrestleMania Raw (27 March - Review)

2. Rhea’s A Nobody?

Rhea Ripley
WWE

Sorry, but this writer isn’t buying Rhea Ripley’s reasoning for the intensity in her feud with SmackDown Women’s Champion Charlotte Flair, not one bit.

Ripley has twice now framed her desire to beat Charlotte for the blue brand title as her destiny, that she must defeat Flair to become the biggest star in WWE. The heavy implication here is that Rhea is nobody unless she beats Charlotte at WrestleMania 39.

Rhea Ripley, the former NXT Women’s Champion, former Raw Women’s Champion, former WWE Women’s Tag Team Champion. That woman, ostensibly a heel, is now desperate to win at Mania to validate her entire career. Worse, this line came out of nowhere. It’s not like it was building for a while, she just said it on SmackDown recently and repeated it on Raw Monday night.

The comment doesn’t ring true with her character and makes her sound more like an unproven babyface than a dominant heel challenger. It just doesn’t work.

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Contributor

Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.