Rhio Previews Women’s World Title Defense At PROGRESS Super Strong Style 16, Why It Needs To Happen

Rhio will defend her PROGRESS Women’s World Championship at Super Strong Style 16 this weekend, and she recently previewed the bout. Rhio will defend the title in a ladder match against Nina Samuels, Kanji and Lizzy Evo at the show, and she spoke about the bout in an interview with Fightful’s Corey Brennan. You can check out some highlights from the interview below:

On how she’s feeling ahead of the match: “To be honest, I think at this point in my career, I’m probably a little bit more calmer than I would usually be, but I’m still not calm. I think I have a level of calmness. I’ve done similar matches. I had a ladder match probably a year and a half into my training and stuff like that when I was on shows. I’ve had a ladder match before, so I think that gives me the little bit of confidence that I know what I’m going into. and i think with everything else that i’ve done during my career, I’ve had a lot of, like, no disqualifications, last women standing, thrown off a balcony. So, you know what i mean okay i’m sure it can’t get much worse than that. So, I think that keeps me a little bit more calm.”

On the necessity of this particular bout: “To be honest, I’m happy but like I feel this match needs to happen so I can get rid of any dead weight that’s following me. Because I feel like since becoming champion, I’ve not had an opportunity to have a match without somebody getting involved. One person or another comes out and they either take the ref out or they take me out or they take my opponent out. I get it. It’s mind games. I understand what’s happening, but I’m sick of it now. At this point, I just want to have matches with people and they’re not getting interrupted. So I think having a match with three people at the same time that feel they’re the entitled one, that they should be number one contender. I hope after this, that’s it then. I can just go to having a normal singles match. I think I need to put forward to Progress that after this as well, maybe to make it clear, there needs to be another women’s tournament because I know it’s obviously Super Strong Style this weekend. And we’ve had the past men’s tournament. So I think it’s the women’s turn now. I think they need another tournament and then we could have a clear cut number one contender. There’s no arguments. There’s no discussions. There’s no grey areas. Then I can get on with my life then. Progress.