Rhea Ripley Recalls Advancing In Mae Young Classic Due to Tegan Nox Injury

Rhea Ripley moved on in the 2018 Mae Young Classic after an unfortunate injury to Tegan Nox, and she reflected on that in a recent interview. Ripley battled Nox in the quarterfinals of the 2018 tournament and while Nox was booked to advance, she suffered a serious knee injury and couldn’t continue which led to Ripley moving on to face IYO SKY. Ripley spoke about that matter and more during her appearance on Insight With Chris Van Vliet; you can see some highlights below (per Wrestling Inc):

On facing SKY after her match with Nox: “[IYO] didn’t really speak English at that time either. It was very, very rough. We had 20 minutes to put a 15-minute match together and it was just alright, plan something. I’m still trying to get over this really traumatic situation which I was just a part of. I still had Tegan’s screams in the back of my head and just the noises that were coming out of her … It’s just like a really specific noise that a human makes when they’re in literal pain. But then going out there and putting on such a good match with IYO, first time ever touching, having Hunter come out and raise my hand on the stage, it was just like I feel like they’re noticing now.”

On how her NXT Women’s Title win over Shayna Baszler came about: “That was when we were filming at Full Sail [University]. We’re filming four weeks in a row, so it was like alright, we’re here all day. We’re going to be filming four shows, so everything’s already pre-planned. I was supposed to wrestle Shayna and I was supposed to lose. I wasn’t supposed to win. It was supposed to be a throwaway ‘Rhea is here, she lost to the champion, now we probably don’t know what to do with her’ [situation], but because I got such a massive reaction from the Full Sail crowd, Sara Amato literally ran into the locker room. She’s like ‘We have to change the ending of the match. Rhea can’t lose.’ We’re going to do a DQ because that’s all we can really think of right now to continue it. So it was a DQ finish. I think I hit her with a chair and then I sat on the chair and told her to come back in my ring because I wanted to continue fighting. Then it trickled down and we had the match with the championship. The rest is really much history.”