IYO SKY, Rhea Ripley and Bianca Belair will open WrestleMania Sunday.
The three will compete in a triple-threat match for SKY’s Women’s World Championship.
The news came on The Pat McAfee Show on Friday, on which Ripley was a guest.
Michael Cole was also on the show. He brought up Ripley’s transformation since she first arrived at WWE. He said:
You started in a small promotion in Australia, came over to the States, a completely different individual when you came here. I remember calling your matches in the Mae Young Classic — a completely different Rhea Ripley. Since you, and I read an article about it earlier this week, since you quote-unquote found yourself, you seem so much more confident and just on a different level than you’ve ever been before.
Ripley responded:
Yeah, it took a lot. I was always someone that would listen to every part of the criticism that people would throw at me, and honestly, it started eating me alive, and I just didn’t feel comfortable being myself.
I wanted to have the long blonde hair to hide behind it. It was my hiding mechanism, you know? If I got shy, I just hid behind my hair. I didn’t get tattoos because I was worried that WWE wouldn’t hire me because I had tattoos. I didn’t like standing out too much. I just wanted to please everyone.
And then I got to a point where I wasn’t happy being me like that anymore. I wanted to be my true self, and ever since I embraced who I am as a human and started dressing the way that I wanted to dress, I cut my hair, I felt more confident because I couldn’t hide behind it. Man, it felt good […]
I think everyone should just embrace their inner self and their true self, and they’ll start to love themselves. Screw what people say about you. Love yourself.
