Though it's hard to remember now, as she's since become one of the most dominant in-ring performers in professional wrestling today, when Rhea Ripley came up to the main roster, she wasn't the strongest promo on the roster, with WWE pairing her off with Liv Morgan and Nikki ASH to help ease her journey along the way.
All of that changed, as Ripley recalls it in an interview with Logan Paul on ImPaulsive, when she joined Judgment Day, as she was able to learn from Edge, aka AEW's Adam Copeland, and round out her game under the “Rated-R Superstar's” watchful eye.
“Joining the Judgment Day helped a lot. When I first entered with Edge and Damian. What better person to fall back on than Edge? Also, Damian, he was better than me. He was still learning, but he was better than me. I felt comfortable even though most of the time I didn't know I didn't know what the hell I was saying because we used a lot bigger words when Edge was in the faction. ‘I don't know what that means, but I'm going to try and say it.' I feel like if I did forget where I was going or got lost on the way, I could fall back on them, and they would have my back, and they remembered my part of the promo too, so they could say what I was going to say,” Rhea Ripley told Logan Paul via 411 Mania.
“Obviously, we grew, and Edge, we kicked him out, Finn joined, Dom and JD came along. Every time I get to go out there with them, it's just joking and talking with friends. They were always there, and we would look at each other. It was a rare time that I would look at the crowd. I would look at them and the main camera, and that's all I would look at so it felt like I was joking around and talking with them. It makes you feel more comfortable and confident. You slowly get better at it because you get reps, and the next thing you know you're out there by yourself and cutting an amazing promo.”
Would Judgment Day and its members have come into their own if Edge was still leading his weird devilish ministry on RAW? No probably not, this felt like a classic case of baby birds needing to leave the nest to come into their own, even if, in this case, the group kicked their mother out of the nest and she went on to become the TNT Champion in AEW. Still, at the end of the day, Ripley is now one of the better female promos on RAW, so all of Edge's hard work and betrayal was in the name of a positive outcome.
Rhea Ripley discusses Buddy Matthews' role in AEW.
Elsewhere in her appearance on ImPaulsive, Rhea Ripley and Logan Paul turned their attention to Buddy Matthews, aka Seth Rollins' former acolide on RAW, Buddy Murphy. While Ripley acknowledged elsewhere on the show that she is proud of Matthews' patience in her on-screen relationship with Dominik Mysterio, she's also proud of his efforts in AEW, too, even if his group, the House of Black, isn't as over as the Judgment Day.
“Like you're different and connecting with the crowd on a certain way, you're obviously skyrocketing to the top. When for him, he's been in WWE. He's been wrestling for over 10 years. I think maybe over 15 years. He's been wrestling for a long, long time and he knows that like when he was in WWE, he hit a peak there. And then over in AEW as well, he's doing well and it's slowly growing.”
“Like The House of Black is slowly growing and getting more steam, but he also knows that at the end of the day that the platform that I'm on, this might make a lot of people mad, but it's obviously higher. And yeah, I feel he doesn't get threatened by that, and he says he doesn't either, so, like, I take his word. I trust him, I believe him. And like he's very comfortable in what he's doing and who I am. And he also loves to help me along the way and help me grow, which is what a relationship should be.”
Would Matthews much prefer to be pushed to the moon in AEW or, better yet, join Judgment Day in WWE to be alongside Ripley at work and at home? Sure, Matthews' desire to reunite with Ripley in WWE is one of the promotion's open secrets, right up with Andrade El Idolo before him and his faction's leader – and Zelina Vega's husband – Malakai Black. Still, but for now, the duo are making it work, which, in professional wrestling, is all you can really do sometimes.
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