Rhea Ripley names her new favorite WWE WrestleMania moment

Rhea Ripley has a new favorite WrestleMania moment after sharing the ring with IYO SKY and Bianca Belair in Las Vegas.

On a new episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, Ripley said — despite losing — her show-stealing triple threat match against SKY and Belair from WrestleMania 41 is now her favorite Mania moment of her career. Before this, it was WrestleMania 39 against Charlotte Flair after their match three years prior had to take place on a closed set at the WWE Performance Center amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I always said my match with Charlotte, because it’s everything that I wanted my first Mania to be. Because it ended up being the COVID Mania — I didn’t get my family, I didn’t get the crowd, I didn’t get anything that normally goes into a Mania,” Ripley said. “And it was just like, ‘Wow, I’m back at the place that I really didn’t like going to every day, and this is my WrestleMania.’ So to then go and face Charlotte again, but it being in front of a crowd, and I saw my family in the front row, I had like all the adrenaline in the world. Everything was so perfect, and then I beat her for the first time. I won the SmackDown Women’s Championship. That was my WrestleMania moment.

“But now I feel like the match with IYO and Bianca has triumphed that. I am literally so proud of that match. I love those two so much. And going through NXT with them, overcoming things with them, watching them overcome things, and watching them grow as performers. And then me growing as a performer to get to that point where we could go to WrestleMania and have such a stellar match, and have people chanting, ‘This is awesome’ and us being the opener — I couldn’t ask for anything more. I understand I lost, it doesn’t matter at that time. It really didn’t, because that was IYO’s moment, but we all got a moment from it at the same time.”

SKY pinned Belair to win the triple threat, retaining the Women’s World Championship in the process. SKY is still champion and has now held the title for almost four months after winning it from Ripley in March.

This Saturday, Ripley will compete in a street fight against Raquel Rodriguez at WWE Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia.