6 Ups And 6 Downs From WWE WrestleMania 36 (Part 2)

by Scott Carlson

1. Flair, Ripley Tear It Down

Rhea Ripley Charlotte Flair
WWE.com

You had to think that Charlotte Flair wasn’t going to let an empty Performance Center stop her from trying to tear down the house Sunday night with Rhea Ripley.

The two battled for Ripley’s NXT Women’s Championship, with Rhea getting an early Riptide but quickly falling victim to Flair’s precision attack on the knee. Sometimes a wrestler targeting a body part can be boring or repetitive, but this was really well done, with Ripley getting in some offense and continuously swinging back at Charlotte whenever possible.

In the end, Flair fought for and locked in the Figure Four, which she bridged into the Figure Eight for the tap-out win.

You could make the argument that this cuts Ripley’s legs out from under her – and that’s a perfectly plausible case to make – but it’s also a 10-time champion defeating a relatively young wrestler. Now, Rhea has a goal: work at her game and get a rematch to win back her title. If WWE can successfully tell that story, then we’ve got something here.

Advertisement
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.