WWE Superstar Rhea Ripley recently spoke with Aus Gamers to promote WrestleMania 38.
During the interview, Ripley commented on her journey to WWE, who her favorite person to work with in the ring is, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the interview below:
On her journey to WWE and seeing herself in WWE 2K22: “So my journey in wrestling has been extremely wild. Obviously I started in Adelaide, South Australia for Riot City Wrestling [and] I grew up watching WWE and never thought that I would ever make it here. [I didn’t] even know there was wrestling in Australia to begin with! Then I found it and I never really looked back — tried out when I was 16, got in and went to Japan for three months when I was 17 and then I got a WWE tryout and I’m here today! And it’s just been a wild, wild ride; a rollercoaster of emotion. But to see how far Australian wrestling and myself have come, over the last, like, nine-years is insane. And to know that I get to be in WWE 2K22 which looks incredible is wild to me — a kid from Adelaide, South Australia is in the game… it’s a real proud moment for me.
“It looks so spot-on as well, I can’t get over it. Like, I was watching my entrance from the reveal and it’s wild to see what [developers] can do with these games these days! I grew up playing things like Crash Bandicoot, you know?! And to see myself in a 2K game is… insane… but at the same time I’m loving it (laughs). It’s just really, really cool.”
On if her WWE experience has been what she expected in terms of workload: “I don’t think I was mentally prepared for all the stuff that would come with being a WWE Superstar. In Australia (at RCW) we wrestled, maybe, once or twice a month. Twice if you were lucky, and if it was more than that, you were really, really lucky. So to come here (WWE) and slowly build myself up and build my name up to the schedule that I have today, it took a lot of prep. And a lot of getting used to. I don’t think you can ever really get used to all of the stuff that we get dealt, because honestly… especially around this time; ‘Mania time, ‘Mania season… there is SO much going on. Media appearances, shows, TV, house shows; house loops — my schedule is very, very jam-packed and it’s taken a lot to mentally prepare for.
“Every week I look at my schedule and I’m, like, “wow, alright! I have to pack for this amount of days and prepare stuff for my house…” but then, it all pays off when you get to see yourself on TV; you get to hear how many lives you’ve changed — you get to see yourself in WWE 2K22 and watch people play you online, which is absolutely wild. It’s definitely been grueling, but at the same time so rewarding.”
On her favorite person to work with: “(Laughs) My answer for this one is always the same: Raquel Gonzalez. She is… absolutely intense and we were in the same class at the WWE Performance Center in Scotty 2 Hotty’s class, we were the only two girls among a group of lads and so we know each other like the backs of our hands. And we not only beat the absolute crap out of each other, but we also work really extremely well together as a team as well. So she’s my number one.”
