9 Big Problems With WWE Heading Into WrestleMania 41

6. Rhea’s Fall From Grace

WWE Raw Rhea Ripley Iyo Sky Bianca Belair Adam Pearce
WWE

Coming out of WrestleMania 40, few superstars had a brighter outlook than Rhea Ripley. She was a bona fide megastar, generating ginormous pops and exuding an aura that wrestlers only wish they could possess. Her rivalry with Liv Morgan had some stumbles, but Ripley overall was well-positioned for another successful Mania.

WWE has managed to torpedo all of that in just a couple short months.

Rhea regained the Women’s World Championship on the Raw Netflix debut, seemingly setting her up for a match with either the winner of the Royal Rumble or the Elimination Chamber. Rumble winner Charlotte Flair passed her over, but the Queen said something that turned out to be prescient during their in-ring encounter: she called Ripley a child, big-timing her despite having just one more year of in-ring experience.

Since then, Ripley lost her championship to Iyo Sky and has done nothing but whine and act like a petulant child. She got distracted during the title match and then whined about that. She played games with Raw GM Adam Pearce rather than being a grownup. She interrupted Iyo and Bianca Belair and complained rather than making her case and asking for the rematch.

Then came the defining moment when she broke up the contract signing for the title match, attacked Iyo and Bianca, signed her name and walked off with the contract, refusing to give it back to Pearce until he yelled like an exasperated parent that she was behaving like a child, thus proving Charlotte’s point.

The end result of these past several weeks is that Ripley is no longer the bold, independent and strong warrior. She’s an aggro-version of a Vince babyface, the supposed good guy/gal who does childish, stupid things that betray the character completely… and then WWE wonders why the hero(ine) is being booed.

And all of this has helped drag down a triple threat that actually should have been a rare safe bet. Iyo/Rhea/Bianca now is a mess rather than one of the biggest matches of WrestleMania weekend.

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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.