On this week’s episode of WWE RAW, Rhea Ripley relinquished the WWE Women’s World Championship after suffering a shoulder injury at the hands of Liv Morgan last week.
On a recent edition of the “Busted Open Radio” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Bully Ray reacted to the unfortunate development in Ripley’s career. He said,
“I know on the surface it sounds bad, but it’s not necessarily bad. It’s not like she got hurt before WrestleMania. She got through WrestleMania, she got injured, now she’s going to go away for a little while. Sometimes … what do they say about absence? (It makes the heart grow fonder) Same thing in wrestling. Sometimes when you go away for a while, it makes the fans yearn for you to come back. They get excited for you when you come back. Rhea Ripley has been positioned as a heel. It’s the fans who are into her — she’s got a great entrance, phenomenal look, she gets the job done in the ring. This time away will be good for Rhea. Recharge the battery, heal your injury, and when Rhea Ripley comes back, when they hit her music on her return, the WWE will have a monster woman babyface on their hands in Rhea Ripley.”
Meanwhile, Ray’s former tag team partner D-Von Dudley expressed his admiration for Paul Heyman’s induction speech during the 2024 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony held earlier this month.
As D-Von was present at the arena during the ceremony, he was unsure which parts of Heyman’s speech had been censored for the television broadcast.
In a recent appearance on the “Gabby AF” podcast, Dudley said,
“His speech made me sweat. I thought the induction was great because Paul really did deserve it. Paul changed the face of professional wrestling, of course, along with the likes of Cactus Jack, and Terry Funk, and [Atsushi] Onita bringing that FMW style from Japan to the United States in which ECW was born. But with the ideas and the booking of Paul and how he ran that company, it was great, and how he gave a bunch of misfits an opportunity when other wrestling organizations wouldn’t have dared give us an opportunity, he gave and made us into stars.”
