WWE NXT Superstar Rhea Ripley recently spoke with Marc Churches of Wide World of Sports in Australia and reacted to the recent primetime praise she received from Triple H.
Triple H appeared during the recent Kickoff pre-show for the SmackDown on FOX season two premiere and was asked which NXT Superstar he thinks will be headlining WrestleMania in the next 5 years. He immediately named Ripley, a former NXT Women’s Champion.
“Listening to that is wild to me,” Ripley said of the nod from Triple H. “Growing up, Triple H is the reason I started watching WWE and the reason I started wrestling. Now he’s my boss and saying that I might be the one to main event WrestleMania in the next five years – to me that’s amazing. To think how far I’ve come from wrestling in little Adelaide, South Australia, to now having Triple H say nice words about me and putting me over everyone is wild.”
Ripley talked more about the boost and motivation she gets from something like Triple H’s comments, and mentioned that she wants to end up on the SmackDown roster, but her goal is to go to RAW or SmackDown and mix it up with a new locker room of opponents. She admitted she wants to be the face of WWE.
“Of course [I want to be the face],” she said. “It gives me a lot of confidence within myself because I know he (Triple H) sees a lot in me and I’m glad he does and I’m happy he does. Sometimes you need a confidence boost in anything you do and it’s nice to get that from someone like Triple H. I normally like to prove people wrong and that gets me going and that’s what makes me push myself to the next level but every now and then it’s nice to get some positivity and I can use that to become the best Rhea Ripley.
“Even though I should be setting goals, the best way to do it is to go with it. I want to make it to SmackDown and I want to make it WrestleMania again. I want to do all the pay-per-views and wrestle everyone. I want to see how far I can get in my career and just keep pushing myself to the limit every time and do my best pretty much. If I were to say a goal – it would be to go on Raw and Smackdown and have a whole new locker room of females I can get in the ring with. I want to experience being in the ring with everyone, seeing their styles and making history.”
Ripley is currently building to a title match with NXT Women’s Champion Io Shirai. She defeated Raquel Gonzalez at NXT Halloween Havoc last week, just weeks after beating Mercedes Martinez in a Steel Cage match at NXT Super Tuesday Night 2. Ripley was asked about the brutal cage match, and how she felt after putting Martinez through the table with the super Riptide from the top.
“It was absolutely insane,” Ripley said. “I was having a blast and even though it was painful, and I paid for it the next day, I absolutely loved it. If I could have more matches like that – I wouldn’t say no, I’d say yes in a heartbeat.
“Lucky, we have the best medical team in the world. I had to recover afterwards, I had to look after myself. I had to go easy in the gym which is something that is really hard for me as I love to push myself.”
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