WWE WrestleMania 36 Results: Rhea Ripley’s Massive Push Comes To A Halt With Loss To Charlotte Flair

WWE started off night two of WrestleMania 36 with quite the shocker when Rhea Ripley lost her NXT Women’s Championship to Charlotte Flair.

Over the past six months or so, WWE has been putting a lot of time and effort into building up the 23-year-old Ripley as both the present and future of women’s wrestling. But Ripley failed to defeat Flair—a 10-time women’s champion and the most pushed female star in WWE history—at WWE’s biggest pay-per-view of the year just a few months after she ended Shayna Baszler’s reign of terror in NXT, and that may have stalled her massive push altogether.

Ripley—at an age when most pro wrestlers can only dream of even getting looked at by WWE—has already accomplished quite a bit in her young career, but she is just the latest star to fall victim to the massive push of “The Queen.”

Might WWE be concerned about pushing Ripley too much, too soon? Following her win over the beloved Bianca Belair at NXT TakeOver: Portland earlier this year, Ripley got a little taste of what it’s like to be on the top of the mountain when she realized that not all WWE fans are going to be thrilled with her massive push. After the negative reaction she received for her win over the incredibly talented Belair, Ripley couldn’t help but call out fans for being “flippy floppy” in regards to her push.

Indeed, pro wrestling fans are notorious for flipping on fans at the drop of a dime. That reality has held true for Flair herself, who’s been widely criticized for getting so many title reigns (and has also lashed out at fans who’ve blasted her strong push), as well as names like Becky Lynch, Seth Rollins, Roman Reigns and John Cena. In essence, any major star who is pushed strongly for a long stretch is going to get some push-back from fans, which might explain why WWE is pumping the brakes on her push so that she doesn’t become the next major star to feel the wrath of the WWE fan base.

Rollins alluded to this earlier this year when he warned Drew McIntyre that fans would quickly sour on his push. While that hasn’t happened, Rollins himself does serve as a cautionary tale for WWE in regards to how it pushes its talents. By most accounts, Ripley is someone who can carry WWE’s women’s division for the next decade or longer, and given that she delivered yet another strong in-ring performance at WrestleMania 36, it certainly appears as if Ripley has all the tools to become the top female star in the business down the road.

As is the case with Flair, however, Ripley has found herself with the proverbial rocket strapped to her back, which is a difficult position for someone to be in nowadays when criticism of pro wrestling and its performers is at an all-time high. WWE has, after all, made a very concerted effort to try to transform Ripley into a star. Bringing Flair to NXT to feud with Ripley, however, served two main purposes: Using Flair to give the old “rub” to Ripley by working with an all-time great, and using Flair to boost NXT viewership as the yellow brand has struggled to keep pace with AEW Dynamite.

In other words, WWE has pulled out all the stops to transform Ripley from an NXT standout to a household name, as was evidenced when she became the first NXT full-timer to even get a match on the grand stage of WrestleMania. NXT was initially expected to have a heavy presence at WWE’s flagship pay-per-view, and yet, Ripley was the only star to find herself in a singles match on the show, which is both a true testament to how highly WWE officials view her and one of those booking moves that some fans simply might not accept.

While Ripley will seemingly be a cornerstone of WWE’s women’s division for the next decade, WWE decided to scale back on her push for the sake of—go figure—another Flair victory.