6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE Raw (7 August)

3. Ripley Finally Pisses Off The Division

Rhea Ripley Candice LeRae
WWE.com

Rhea Ripley has been talking down to the entire women’s division for months now, with minimal pushback. As great as Ripley has been as a character, it’s tough to call her reign – which includes beating Natalya twice and Zelina Vega once – a huge success.

Worse, the absence of the division rising up against the Judgment Day’s Eradicator is embarrassing. That finally changed Monday night when Raquel Rodriguez jumped Rhea for the second week in a row, battering the Women’s World Champion and putting the unstoppable champion on her heels a bit.

Where it got a bit better was Candice LeRae being there to try to keep the peace and getting pulled into the brawl, only to finally snap and attack Ripley, with Indi Hartwell joining in. Rhea’s clearly made enemies during this run, and it’s well past the time people stood up to her and given her a challenge.

LeRae will be a perfectly acceptable challenger of the week while Rodriguez continues to simmer in the background. Throw in the fact that Becky Lynch should be finished with Trish Stratus after next week and Shayna Baszler might finally be taken seriously and fans can actually visualize a functional women’s division on Raw.

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Contributor
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.