Back when she first made her WWE debut during the first Mae Young Classic, NXT Superstar Rhea Ripley sported a very different look compared to her current aesthetic.
Speaking with Yahoo!, Ripley explained how she wasn’t confident during her time competing in the Mae Young Classic Tournament, noting that she “wasn’t being myself.”
“I went out there and was trying to please everyone, be what they thought I should be,” she explained. “I was trying to make everyone happy, but it wasn’t making me happy at all. At the second Mae Young Classic, I changed everything, I was completely different. I was myself, the person that I know I am and brought the house down.”
Looking to her recent success in WWE’s black-and-gold brand, Ripley reflected on her successful victory at NXT TakeOver: WarGames. Her team would defeat Team Baszler, despite the odds being heavily against them.
“WarGames was a match that I’ve dreamt of my entire life,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to have a match where I get to use weapons and I never got that back home. That was my first time being able to use all of that stuff in a match — legally. We put on a match that no one expected from us and helped prove why NXT is the main roster.”
Ripley is currently scheduled to face off against the current NXT Women’s Champion Shayna Baszler on the December 18th episode of NXT on USA Network.
