High praise has been offered for both participants in Saturday’s epic battle over the WWE SmackDown Women’s Championship.
On night one of WrestleMania 39, Charlotte Flair and Rhea Ripley left the WWE Universe mesmerized throughout their 23-minute match. Each woman unleashed their hardest hits, but in the end, Rhea Ripley emerged as the victor, crowning her as the brand-new SmackDown Women’s Champion.
Following Ripley’s historic win, Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque spoke at the April 1 post-show press conference. When asked to give his take on Ripley’s development since WrestleMania 36, where she lost to Flair, Levesque gave applause to both competitors.
“First of all, I’ll say to Charlotte, just [a] generational athlete. Changed the game for women across the board, and you just have to look at stats, like I think this is her seventh WrestleMania. She’s been in the title picture for every single one of them. That’s incredible,” he said. “She’s an incredible athlete. I can’t recall seeing her ever in matches where it doesn’t not feel real. There’s just a different level of performance there.”
“When you get to Rhea Ripley though, she’s 26 years old,” Levesque continued. “The growth path that she is, I say this often to Roman [Reigns], that he operates storytelling and character-wise at a different level from everybody else, and he does. The continuity of everything he does and the way it all plays out, to me it’s at a different level. Rhea’s at that level now.”
“She’s getting to that level where she sells different, she works different, she looks different, her facials are different. Everything that she does is now clicking, and it never gaps. Her growth has been unbelievable. Every time I think, ‘Wow, she’s really peaking now,’ I find myself six months later going, ‘Holy s—, she hasn’t hit the surface yet.’ It’s amazing. She’s awesome.”
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