Should Rhea Ripley Be Added Into Iyo Sky vs. Bianca Belair At WrestleMania 41? | Question Of The Day

Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!

A shocking turn of events took place last night on Monday Night Raw as Iyo Sky defeated Rhea Ripley to win the Women’s World Championship. This came about as Ripley was too busy arguing with Elimination Chamber winner Bianca Belair at ringside, losing track of Sky and making a fatal mistake to allow her to recover and ultimately hit a hurricanrana and her trademark moonsault.

My question for you today is “Do you think WWE will/should add Rhea Ripley into that match and make it a Triple Threat, or is it better as just Iyo Sky against Bianca Belair? If you don’t think it should be a Triple Threat, what would you do with Ripley for WrestleMania, if anything?”

Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.

As far as my answer…

100% yes. Not only do I think it should happen and will happen, but I’d argue it MUST happen.

Rhea Ripley is undoubtedly the most popular woman on the roster. As much as some others are very popular (like Liv Morgan, Bianca Belair herself, etc) nobody has the same aura as Ripley. Admittedly, WWE has done a poor job booking her since her return from injury, sidelining her and stalling for time to stretch out that feud with Morgan, so she isn’t getting quite the same level of a pop as she once did, but the audience is still in love with Mami.

You don’t just leave someone like that out of the WrestleMania card. There aren’t even any other options for her to do something else that would make any sense, either. With no better alternatives, why wouldn’t you keep her in the title hunt?

Some might be wondering how that will happen, and to be transparent and blunt, I think WWE is going to handle going about this in a rather uninteresting and almost problematic way. For some reason, intentionally or subconsciously, WWE likes to book Ripley like a loser around WrestleMania season. Even if she’s been dominating, once February comes around, she becomes an idiot and a crybaby who needs to be taken down a peg.

Don’t think that’s the case? I’ll remind you that in 2020, Ripley is dominating in NXT like no other and coming off the hottest streak she had been on, and she begs Charlotte Flair to challenge her. What happens? Flair beats her by submission, Ripley is crying in the ring and after in a promo, and then, Ripley takes the fall in a Triple Threat against Flair and Iyo Sky at NXT In Your House soon after, too. 2021, she beats Asuka, which is a step up, but they put little to no effort into that story. 2022, she loses alongside Liv Morgan in a multi-team match. 2023, she beats Flair, who berates her the whole feud and talks about how she had beaten her the last time. Last year, she retains over Becky Lynch, only to be taken out of action soon after. This year, Flair already belittled her, and now, we’ve got Ripley crashing out after losing the title and calling herself stupid.

I don’t think WWE is aware of how much of a loser they make her look sometimes, so I don’t think WWE is going to realize how it’ll also make her look like a sore loser if she whines and complains about Bianca Belair’s interference and asks Iyo Sky to extend her the same favor of respect in granting her a rematch, but I think that’s how WWE is going to do it.

What would I do instead? Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t have had Iyo Sky involved in this at all, and I would have built up Belair/Ripley way more in advance to make that a viable singles feud, but if WWE were to hire me to the creative team today where I can’t undo any of that, I would lean on Iyo being the one to bring up the rematch idea herself. Make her a fighting champion who wants to be up against the best and who feels like she needs to prove that without that interference, she would have still won. Then, Belair can get involved, leading to a non-finish, and Pearce can just make it a Triple Threat.

All this to say, that’s because I don’t think Belair against Sky is important or interesting enough on its own for the marquee without Ripley. As much as people within the smark bubble love Sky, and as much as casuals can look at her and go “Wow, she’s fun to watch”, she just doesn’t have the same level of popularity and overall appeal to suddenly swoop in and completely replace Ripley on The Grandest Stage of Them All like that. We’re not talking about AJ Styles beating Jinder Mahal to set up a better match against Brock Lesnar here. Most casual fans would see this as a downgrade to go from Ripley/Belair to Sky/Belair, but they’ll think it’s an upgrade if it’s Ripley/Sky/Belair all together.

WrestleMania shouldn’t be chock full of multi-man and multi-women matches where everything is a Triple Threat or Fatal 4-Way, and they should have planned out something better than this, but I think they’re hoping to just put their 3 best in-ring performers in the women’s division from the top of the card together and that it will all sort itself out on paper without having to be a story they really have to think about, as all their attention will be on things like John Cena’s heel turn, Roman Reigns, and so on.

If we can’t get Ripley vs. Belair done properly, it has to be Ripley vs. Belair vs. Sky. I don’t think Sky and Belair on their own is the right call for Ripley, or for the WrestleMania card as a whole.

What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!