6 Ups & 4 Downs From WWE WrestleMania Backlash

3. What Is A Nightmare?

Rhea Ripley
WWE.com

Serious question: Who is Rhea Ripley?

Yes, she’s “The Nightmare,” the former NXT Women’s Champion. But aside from that, can anyone tell us anything about her as a character or person? What makes her tick? What drives her?

The reason to pose this question during a PPV (where storyline developments are usually downplayed in favor of the matches) is that we’re now a month into Ripley’s title reign, and there has been literally no development of her character. We know nothing about her, aside from the fact she’s 24 and beat Asuka at WrestleMania 37 for the Raw Women’s Championship.

If WWE is going to have Rhea hold the title, they really need to give fans a reason to care about her. Fans know Asuka, and they know Charlotte. But putting Ripley on TV and telling fans “react to her” isn’t going to cut it. It’s not even clear if she’s a villain, face or tweener.

So WWE, figure this out, and tell us so we know who she is and whether we should care about her.

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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.