Rhea Ripley Looks at Mae Young Classic As Match That Solidified Her WWE Career

Rhea Ripley says that her match in the semifinals of 2018 Mae Young Classic as the bout that solidified her career in WWE. Ripley was a guest on Unsportsmanlike and during the conversation, she was asked when she felt she had made it in the business.

“It’s hard to pinpoint a specific moment because I feel like in my career there’s been so many because I’ve had so many rollercoaster of emotions,” Ripley said (per Wrestling Inc). “There’s ups and downs where I’m like alright, that might be the end of that run. Then all of a sudden something else will happen and it’ll pick up.”

“But I think that the biggest one that really solidified my time here in the WWE and helped me start my historic run now, which is absolutely wild to say, it would be me and IYO SKY in the second Mae Young Classic. That was such horrible circumstances with Tegan Nox getting injured in the previous match that I had with her. So then I had to go on to that match. It was just a moment where everyone kind of realized that I was good at my job.”

Ripley battled IYO SKY in the semifinals of the tournament, with SKY (then Io Shirai) winning to advice to the finals where Toni Storm proved the ultimate winner.