Rhea Ripley recently appeared on Flash Morgan Webster's "Wrestling Friends" podcast, and explained what led to her defeating Shayna Baszler for the NXT Women's Championship.
As it turns out, it wasn't always the plan for her to get her hands on the title, but some changes behind the scenes ended up leading to the biggest win of her career.
"So Shayna had pretty much gone through everyone in NXT, so I pretty much finished with NXT UK, handed it off to Piper [Niven] and I was coming into NXT to do that promo," Ripley explains. "So we were supposed to do a match later because everything was pre-recorded at that time, so we were supposed to do a match later on that night [for] a couple weeks after and I was supposed to tap out. That’s what was supposed to happen. It was supposed to be a one-off thing, I tap out, that’s it. So I went out, and as soon as my music hit, the whole Full Sail just erupted so loud."
"It doesn’t even sound that loud when you watch it back, but if you were there in person, it was insane and then I went into the ring, cut my promo the best that I have, and people popped so loud for that," she continues. "Shayna left, I left, I came back and everyone backstage was just like, ‘Oh my God, that was really good.’ So anyways, Shayna and I, we go to get changed into our gear. Sara [Amato] comes running into the room, and Sara’s just like, ‘Guys, change of plans. Rhea got too much of a pop, we need to change the ending,’ and I was like, ‘Well, okay… like what are we gonna do?’"
"Shayna’s like, ‘We’ve been trying to tell you this for weeks. Every time we’re on a road loop, Rhea gets the biggest pop out of anyone’ and Sara’s like, ‘Yep! We believe you now. We need to change the ending.’ Legit, I was like, ‘Oh my God, so what’s happening?’ And they’re like, ‘So we’re gonna need to do a DQ so we can continue this some other time.’ I’m like, ‘Okay, cool. That’s cool with me, whatever.’" Ripley laughed. "So that’s why I hit her with the chair so we could continue it."
That obviously opened the door to Ripley winning the NXT Women's Championship, a title she would defend at WrestleMania against Charlotte Flair in a history making match. Since then, we've not seen too much of her on WWE programming, but she did recently return to NXT. As for Baszler, she's still part of the RAW roster and will likely be one of Asuka's first challengers for the RAW Women's title.
Still, this just goes to show what a difference the crowd can make during this era of audience-free shows!