Rhea Ripley: ‘I Wasn’t Meant To Be The First NXT UK Women’s Champion’

Following the conclusion of the Mae Young Classic in 2018, WWE held another women’s tournament to crown the inaugural NXT UK Women’s Champion. The winner of that tournament ended up being Rhea Ripley.

Now, it has been revealed that Ripley was not meant to win the tournament. This means there was supposed to be a different first NXT UK Women’s Champion. Ripley made this reveal on Flash Morgan Webster’s Wrestling Friends podcast. Here is the full quote, courtesy of Fightful:

“It was a wild couple of days. I don’t think I was supposed to make it past the second round. I don’t really know what happened, everything just kept changing. They kept changing the matches, everything. Going into the final with Toni, I wasn’t supposed to be in the finals. I don’t know what happened in the meetings or what was said or done, but somehow I won the whole tournament. I don’t know where it came from, I thought they wanted a heel to be champ. It seemed like it was made for Toni to be NXT UK Women’s Champion.”

“The most depressing thing was, she got injured as well and hurt her back. That didn’t make me feel fantastic about myself. ‘Man, I keep injuring people.’ But because that happened, everyone was like, ‘Toni was supposed to win, that’s why they had a weird ending that came out of nowhere.’ No, it was planned that way. It was just a stressful day,”

How different things would be if Ripley hadn’t won. Would she have later become the NXT Women’s Champion? We will never know.

Who do you think should have been the first NXT UK Women’s Champion? Let us know on Twitter!

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