Rhea Ripley on the moment she found out she was going to be Women's Champion

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Rhea Ripley talked about interesting topics in a conversation with My Love Letter to Wrestling. Ripley won the Women's Royal Rumble Match in 2023 by defeating Charlotte Flair. However, Ripley found out a few days before that she would be the winner.

She recalled those moments. “I want to say two nights before or the night before..maybe two nights before. I got a message, ‘How is your cardio?’ What do you mean how is my cardio? I’ve been a manager the last few months.

I’m happy to do 20 minutes on the elliptical, but what are we talking about here? It was crazy. When they finally told me, I was like, ‘You’re joking, right?’ I think I could do it because adrenaline is a powerful thing, but at the same time I was like, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do it.’ Exactly, go out there and wrestle for an hour to see how it goes,” Ripley said, as quoted by pwmania.com

Rhea Ripley talks about the match

Ripley felt enormous nervousness and responsibility before the match.

She also knew that there was an interesting opponent across the street, but she was ready to accept the challenge. Ripley showed her qualities in the best way. Despite the injuries and everything she experienced in her career, this great wrestler always believed in herself.

“I was excited. But I was very nervous, just the fact being that. I haven’t really had many reps in the ring doing actual matches like full-blown long matches for a while because I was out injured and then I came back and we did the Judgment Day stuff and they sort of kept me out of it just a little bit to keep me more of a special sort of thing.

So I was, I was really nervous and then I did the Royal Rumble and. I was like, ‘Ok, maybe I can go.’ But then going into Mania I was like, damn, it’s against Charlotte. And like, I know how it is to wrestle Charlotte.

A superb athlete, you know, like, she’s so good at everything and she could just keep going and going and being in the room with her, like many times they were like the fittest times that I’ve ever been. Like it was the fittest Ripley that you could have seen.

My cardio was on point and that Rhea Ripley was still, like, struggling to a point. So I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m going to suck.’ There’s nothing worse than having a match ahead where you’re like, oh, ‘I haven’t been doing cardio for the last three months.’ I was like, ‘Man, I hope I can keep up.’ I feel better. Like my confidence was like, man, I think you can do it."