Rhea Ripley On The Evolution Of Her Character, Women’s Tag Match at WrestleMania

Rhea Ripley teams with Liv Morgan tonight at WrestleMania in a bid to win the Women’s Tag Team Championships, and she talked about the match and her character evolution in a new interview. Ripley spoke with PWInsider and you can see a few highlights below:

On being in the Women’s Tag Team Title match: “I’m very excited. I’m very, very excited. It’s wild to see how far I’ve come in my WrestleMania matches from the NXT Women’s Championship against Charlotte in front of zero people…the first one, zero people. Second one, limited capacity with Asuka. I won the Raw Women’s Championship. Third one… This one can be full capacity and I’m going for the Women’s Tag Team Championships with Liv. I think that’s absolutely wild to see how different every year has been for me. But I’m so excited and I’m so glad that I get to share this moment with Liv. She’s special, dude. She really is. She has worked so hard to be where she is and she works hard every single day, and I love to see it. And I love that I get to share this moment with her when we step out on stage and get the roaring ovation from the crowd. And hopefully win the Women’s Tag Team Championships.”

On evolving in her on-screen persona: “To be honest with you, I’m sort of just being myself. It started at the second Mae Young Classic. When I first moved to America, I was 20 years old and I was still growing up as a human outside of work, let alone in work. So I was very shy. I just wanted to please everyone. And then by the second Mae Young, I stopped caring what people thought. And I was like, “You know what? I’m just going to be myself.” I’m going to do what I think is good for me. I’m going to dress the way that I want to dress. I’m going to cut my hair the way I want to cut my hair. I just didn’t care what anyone thought or said about me, and I’ve sort of been running with that and just being myself and trying to prove to everyone that they can be themselves and be comfortable at the same time. But yeah, every time I go out there, it’s my genuine reactions to things. Like I said, I just go out there and I be myself and if that has evolved throughout the time, then that has, but I’ve also been growing up well in this business. So it’s just me.”

On the logistics of figuring out a four-way tag team match: “So, it’s very difficult but we always seem to put it together. Everyone’s so different that it sort of does work in a way because… It’s like a puzzle, right? Right. And you got to find the pieces that go everywhere. And there’s different puzzle pieces. There’s different shapes, but they all fit together in the end. So we just got to work out our puzzle. It is difficult, but there’s a way to do it. And that’s why we are the best in the world at what we do. And that’s why we’re here and we’re on WrestleMania.”

On what she hopes the audience gets out of WrestleMania: “Man, I hope that they just get to enjoy their time. They get to sit there, relax, be loose and just live in the moment because that’s what WrestleMania is all about. Don’t be scared to love wrestling. Where some people are, they’re very reserved. Where with WrestleMania, you really just got to sit there and you got to take everything in and you got to react to things that you want to react to and just live in the moment and just be excited because we all are. Not just the fans but the wrestlers too. We’re all pumped.”