6 Ups And 4 Downs From WWE Night Of Champions 2023

2. Dominance

Natayla Rhea Ripley
WWE.com

No one was buying that Natalya had a chance to pry the SmackDown Women’s Championship off of Rhea Ripley Saturday.

But what we got at Night of Champions was an absolutely incredible display of dominance from the Judgment Day’s Eradicator, as Ripley obliterated Nattie in seconds. Dominik Mysterio distracted Natalya at the bell, and Rhea pounced. She battered the challenger outside the ring, the rolled her back in and flattened her with a Riptide.

And really, that was the best-case scenario for this match from the moment it was announced. Natalya clearly wasn’t going to have a meaningful feud with the SmackDown Women’s Champion, so if that was the case, they might as well avoid a 10-minute back-and forth affair that bored fans to tears.

Going with the squash was by far the right call, and kudos to WWE for recognizing that an running with it.

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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.