Rhea Ripley suffers upset loss on RAW
RAW Women's Champion Rhea Ripley hit a bit of a road bump on the way to the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view. The Nightmare was bested by former Women's Tag Champion Nikki Cross in a match with an interesting stipulation.
Ripley ran into Charlotte Flair backstage and attempted to get into the mind of the Queen ahead of her match with Asuka tonight. While they were in each other's faces, Nikki Cross entered the frame and claimed she could beat both of them. Charlotte laughed in her face, stating it would only take two minutes for her to defeat Nikki.
After lambasting her long-time rival for always looking down on everyone else, Ripley stepped up where Charlotte couldn't and accepted Nikki's challenge.
Despite coming out of one of the top storylines in WWE late last year, Nikki Cross was left with nothing to do when she was kicked to the curb by her former best friend, Alexa Bliss. Ever since losing to Bliss the night after the Royal Rumble, Cross has not had a single match on RAW.
In fact, aside from that match, the only other bout she had on WWE programming was on WWE Main Event where she beat Naomi earlier this month.
Fans of Crazy Nikki have been clamoring to see more from her recently, and we got a little bit of that during the Lumberjack Match between John Morrison and Damian Priest last week. Tonight, we finally got the former Women's Champion inside of the ring.
Rhea Ripley falls to Nikki Cross in two minutes
Rhea Ripley had a big task in front of her. Though she was sparingly used, Nikki Cross is a tough competitor who has taken many top WWE Superstars to their limit in her time with the company.
Tonight, all Nikki had to do was last two minutes with Rhea Ripley, and she managed to do just that. Nikki Cross got a bit more offense in than Rhea did, nearly pinning her clean before the time was up.
A wild boot to the jaw managed to catch Nikki, but Rhea Ripley didn't go for the finish. Instead, her anger got the best of her, and she battered Nikki in the corner until the time limit expired. With that, Nikki Cross had a victory over the WWE RAW Women's Champion.
It will be interesting to see how The Nightmare responds to this shock loss on this week's show. We can expect a rematch between the two soon where Ripley will be looking to get revenge on Cross.
Fans will also be anxious to see if this means Nikki could be included in the title scene. It would certainly freshen things up in the RAW Women's division which has been dominated by Asuka, Charlotte, and Rhea Ripley in the past few months.