Rhea Ripley is riding high as SmackDown Women’s Champion, but the star feels she has some unfinished business when it comes to one WWE Hall of Famer.
Speaking on a new episode of After the Bell with Corey Graves, Ripley was asked who she’d like to wrestle, and the star named Beth Phoenix as her number one choice. While the two women have faced off before, they have yet to meet in one-on-one action.
“I think one of the main ones is, I want my singles match with Beth Phoenix. I want my singles match, not a tag, a singles. But if she doesn’t fit the mold of what we’re going with, and we’re going with first time ever, I want to say Lita. I think that would be a lot of fun.”
Beth Phoenix and Rhea Ripley have been at odds for months, and tensions heightened at Survivor Series when Ripley delivered a brutal con-chair-to to Phoenix despite her husband Edge giving in and saying “I quit” in defeat to Finn Balor. The two had a confrontation during the men’s Royal Rumble match, and at Elimination Chamber, Phoenix and Edge were victorious over the team of Ripley and Balor.
Rhea Ripley Opened Up About Working With The Judgment Day
Elsewhere in the interview, Ripley was asked about her working relationship with The Judgment Day, and she says she’s grown immensely as a performer being part of the group.
“I’ve definitely learned a lot being in the Judgment Day. The Judgment Day, it just works. I feel like we’ve all grown individually within the group as well, which has been really, really cool to see. At the start when it was me, Priest, and Edge, I feel like I learned a lot about myself and my own confidence when being in the ring with them boys, especially learning from someone like Edge.
“He’s a legend in his business. I loved him growing up. He was one of my favorites. I cried when he retired. So knowing that I get to go out there and stand in the ring with him and back him up, and he has my back as well, it was really, really cool. It brought me to this other side of the business where like, I do get to be in the ring with the boys and I do get to be around them and listen to how they talk and how they do things.
“It was a different learning curve for me, which was really fun. It’s not super different, but at the same time, like the way that they speak to each other, the way that they plan little bits and pieces, sometimes it’s just so intricate, and I was like, ‘Yo, I didn’t realize that we could do something like this.’ I feel like being with the boys, we get away with a lot more, which I was having fun with.
“I’ve been able to learn from people like Finn Balor, Damian Priest, and then also with Dominik. We’ve been growing in this business. He’s been in this business pretty much his whole life, which is wild to even think. But just watching his growth over the last six months, I want to say, it’s been so incredible.
“We weren’t even really friends before this. We barely even talked. We just said hello, like, how are you? So to see how much I’ve bonded with these guys in such a short amount of time, it’s been so rewarding, and so much fun. When we’re out there, we all just help each other, which is why a lot of the time you don’t even see it ,like we’re slowly or quietly talking to each other telling each other like what we should do, or how we should act, and what the plan is, sort of thing. It’s been a lot of fun.”
h/t WrestlingNews.co