7 Ups And 6 Downs From Last Night's WWE Raw (March 9)

3. The Proper Play

Charlotte Rhea Ripley Raw
WWE.com

There are a few different ways the Rhea Ripley/Charlotte Flair feud could go, and while the seeds were sown of the NXT Women’s Champion as a mini-Charlotte trying to step out from her shadow, an interesting subtext was revealed Monday night.

Flair noted that in addition to all the hype surrounding the company’s “new shiny toy,” Ripley could never be the next Charlotte. She went on to point out that there was a big difference between checking out the WrestleMania venue when it was empty versus when it’s filled with tens of thousands of fans.

The implication here is that Charlotte has wrestled on the grandest stage of them all multiple times, in front of huge crowds, while Rhea has toiled in NXT in front of mostly smaller crowds of hundreds or a few thousand, with the occasional TakeOver topping 10,000.

But then Ripley stepped to Flair on Monday and simply decked her in the face, then walked away, showing she wasn’t intimidated. It was very simple, but effective. They could play the “butterflies” angle at Mania or just have Charlotte try to exploit it in the coming weeks. It’s a nice little wrinkle to add, and it actually makes a lot of sense.

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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.