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After watching Bianca Belair get drafted onto SmackDown despite being the current holder of the RAW Women's Championship, fans, announcers, and wrestlers alike wondered what that meant for Rhea Ripley, who is the current SmackDown Woman's Champion following a huge WrestleMania 39 win over Charlotte Flair.
Would Ripley and Belair switch belts Becky Lynch-Charlotte Flair style in the future should the emotional leader of The Judgement Day move over to the Red Brand? Or would the two women wrestle for the one belt, with the RAW title being vacated to earn the honor? Either way, Ripley doesn't care how things shake out, as long as she remains champion, as she noted to Megan Morant on the SmackDown LowDown.
“No, I'm gonna stop you right there, cuz I know exactly where this is going, Megan,” Ripley said. “Yes, Zelina might have got the upper hand tonight, because she's slippery and she's quick, and I'll give her that and that only. But at Backlash, Zelina can't keep running, she can't keep evading, she can't run up the ramp when it's just time to go. I might be going in the favorite – and that's fair, that's a fair call by everyone, they're very very smart – but I'm also gonna walk out victorious. I'll walk out with my SmackDown Women's Championship, and Zelina, she's gonna be flat down on the mat.
“Look, wherever I am: RAW, SmackDown, I'm gonna be a champion. The SmackDown Women's Championship, it's coming with me. And yeah, I watched the draft tonight. I saw that Bianca's coming here, so I guess we'll see what happens, because I'm in the dark like everyone else but all I know is that I am going to be a champion wherever the h*ll I am. Is that enough for you, Megan?”
With the draft scheduled to resume on Monday following a special round on Saturday, Ripley will find out soon enough which brand she will call home moving forward and if Dominik Mysterio, Finn Balor, and Damian Priest will join her too. Either way, it's safe to say WWE wouldn't have moved Belair over to SmackDown unless they had a plan for the proceeding that makes Ripley look as good, if not better, than she has before. Who knows, maybe she'll even get a wrestle a legend or two, as there is one who wouldn't mind a match one bit.
Lita wouldn't mind getting in the ring with Rhea Ripley.
On paper, Lita should be winding down her in-ring career; she's already in the WWE Hall of Fame, already sat atop the woman's division as one of the best in-ring performers, and even had a surprising run with the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships in 2023, even if she didn't technically lose the belts and instead had to watch from medical as her long-time friend, Trish Stratus, turned on her tag team partner following a loss to Liv Morgan and Raquel Rodriguez.
So naturally, Lita would be thinking about a retirement match, right? Eh, probably not because, as Lita noted in an interview with WrestleRant, she already had what felt like a retirement match with Lynch in Saudi Arabia last year.
“I really felt that my match with Becky in Saudi Arabia felt like a really nice retirement match that I did not anticipate having that opportunity,” Lita said via 411 Media. “I felt really satisfied with the whole full circle moment of that, paving the way for women on the front end in the United States, going to when the relationship was established in Saudi Arabia, women weren't allowed to come to the matches and then there were no women performing to a featured match where Becky and I were all over billboards all over the kingdom. It felt really poetic and I felt happy with that match. I feel good with that. This just feels like bonus time.”
So, if Lita really is operating on “bonus time,” are there any WWE stars she would like to wrestle at some point down the line, assuming she recovers from Stratus' attack? Why yes, Lita does have a performer in mind, one as punk rock and “extreme” as her glory days.
“(Rhea Ripley)'s an incredible talent,” Lita said. “I would love to work with her because it would really push me. It would push me beyond my comfort zone, and I feel like I've been satisfied with what I've done in this chapter, but I would love to see how far I could take it.”
Could Ripley turn her attention to Lita after her match with Zelina Vega at Backlash? Potentially so, but first, both women have their own feuds they need to finish off first, with Stratus and Vega having pretty big receipts in their not-too-distant future.
