It is safe to say that one of the biggest stars in professional wrestling is former WWE Women’s World Champion Rhea Ripley. However, she didn’t always believe she would find success.
Rhea Ripley was recently interviewed by Chris Van Vliet on his Insight podcast. During the interview, she shared why initially she was under the impression that this amount of success was not possible.
“Honestly, no. I always talk about my Riot City Wrestling try-out, and it’s funny, because my coach, he went around the room after the try-out and was like, ‘Where do you want to go in wrestling?’ He asked everyone in the tryout, and everyone said, ‘I want to make it to WWE.’ He straight up got sick of that answer.
“He’s like, ‘I don’t want to break your heart or ruin your dreams, but that’s probably not going to happen. We’re in Australia. We’re very, very far away. WWE doesn’t really come here, so making it to WWE is going to be extremely difficult and probably won’t happen.’ So for me, I was a little bit realistic about that, and I was like, I just love wrestling. I find it fun, I find it entertaining. I like going out there and entertaining a crowd and showing people that they can do whatever they want to do. Especially a female in such a male-dominated sport. I liked that challenge.”
Rhea Ripley always likes a challenge
During the same interview, Rhea Ripley shared that she always loves a challenge, but never knew that love would help her make it this far in her career.
“I’ve always been someone that likes a challenge, but I never thought that I would be able to make it as far as I’ve come. Even by the time that I did get signed and I moved to America and I started NXT, I never thought that the name Rhea Ripley would be as big as it is now, and it’s just wild to see, especially the last couple years how much I’ve blown up.
“I forget who I am sometimes. I’m walking around and I’m like why are these people looking at me? Do I look like a 13-year-old boy? Just staring at me because I look stupid, what is wrong with me right now? Is my hair staticing to my face or something? Why are they looking at me? And I get mad. I’m like, look away. Take a photo. It’ll last longer. And then I’m like oh sh*t. They probably know who I am. I just get mad sometimes. I just forget that I’m known. If I knew that they knew who I was, I wouldn’t feel bad about it. I’d be like, oh you want a photo? I’d be really nice. But it’s just like, I forget that I’m Rhea Ripley sometimes,” Rhea Ripley said.
