After a successful title defense at WrestleMania 40, Rhea Ripley may be forced to vacate the WWE Women’s World Championship due to injury.
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According to a report from PWInsider, the belief is that the injure may be so severe that she will have no choice but to drop the championship after a backstage brawl with Liv Morgan on WWE Raw last week. In fact. her vacating could happen as soon as tonight’s episode of Raw. Morgan attacked Ripley from behind with a chair, catching her off guard and attacking her injured arm. WWE officials stepped in to pull the two away from each other as Dominik Mysterio came to Ripley’s aid.
Ripley surpassed a full calendar year as champion when she defeated Becky Lynch on night one of this year’s WrestleMania. With the win, she added a new accolade to her collection by officially defeating all of the four horsewomen. It’s also worth noting that in recent weeks, Ripley has been battling a wrist injury that she’s been keeping a brace on. The brace was clearly shown on last week’s Raw, so it’s clearly something that’s still irritating the champion. There’s no word as of now as to whether or not this injury is related, but she noted in a recent interview with Ariel Helwani on MMA Hour that it has been bothering her for “a while.”
“[The brace is for] my wrist. It’s been bothering me for a while, but it’s okay,” Ripley said. “It’s nothing I can’t handle, to be honest. In this kind of work, there’s always little bits and pieces going on, so you just fight through it.”
As for how it happened, Ripley explained that it was simply “wear and tear” of wrestling for an extended period of time. “[It happened by] just doing my job. Wear and tear. Just continuously on the road, continuously having matches and doing all these things, and every now and then, something happens, but you just overcome it pretty much. It’s been bothering me for a few months, maybe two months now, but I’ve been in this cast for maybe a week-and-a-half.”
Comicbook.com wishes Ripley the best in her recovery and will continue to monitor the situation to provide further updates.
H/T: Wrestling Inc.
