Rhea Ripley believes a main roster match with Bianca Belair isn’t off the table just yet. After winning the 2023 women’s Royal Rumble, Ripley was presented with two options for WrestleMania opponents — Bianca Belair or Charlotte Flair. Evidently, “The Eradicator” chose to rekindle her rivalry with the latter in hopes of redeeming her WrestleMania 36 loss to Flair for the “NXT” Women’s Championship.
In the wake of Ripley’s announcement, some fans were left disappointed, as they were hoping a long-awaited match between Ripley and Belair would finally materialize on such a grand stage. Ripley was on track to challenge Belair for the “Raw” Women’s Championship last summer, but unfortunately, she was replaced due to injury. “If you get hurt, you lose your spot on the ladder and you have to work your way back to it,” Ripley said in a Facebook live stream with “WWE Deutschland.”
Though Ripley has shifted her focus to Charlotte Flair, she expects herself and Belair to meet again at some point down the line. “I think Bianca and I — our feud and us going head-to-head — is something that is going to be happening for years to come. I think we’ve got a lot of years behind us and we’re going to run the women’s division here in WWE.”
Belair herself previously expressed her interest in facing Ripley. But outside of a “SmackDown” dark match in May 2022, Ripley and Belair haven’t met one-on-one since February 2020, when the two were still a part of WWE’s developmental brand of “NXT.”
