WWE Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley seemed poised to be a big part of WWE SummerSlam, until a torn meniscus led to her being sidelined long enough that WWE decided to create an Interim Women’s Championship in a six woman ladder match at the PLE. Understandably, this led to several changes to the SummerSlam card, though perhaps more than some think. Wrestlevotes Radio on Fightful reports that Ripley’s injury forced WWE to make several changes regarding both the WWE Women’s Championship scene and the WWE Women’s United States Championship.
The first notable change was a match involving Jade Cargill and Charlotte Flair, which the report notes was supposed to be a championship match. It is not clarified whether Ripley would’ve defended the championship against both Cargill and Flair in a three way match, or if she was supposed to drop the title to one of them to set up a Cargill-Flair singles match, and was hurt before she could do so. Meanwhile, Women’s US Champion Tiffany Stratton was originally scheduled to defend her title in a singles match, in order to give Stratton a big showcase in her hometown of Minnesota. Instead, Rhea’s injury led to Stratton being inserted, alongside Cargill, into the ladder match to crown the Interim Women’s Champion.
Putting the Interim tag on the Women’s Championship would suggest that Ripley would be back sooner than later, though there is still no confirmation on when she’ll be ready to go beyond WWE being optimistic she could return in the fall. While the potential was there for Ripley to work through the injury, there was said to be a “strong internal push” within WWE for Ripley to take as much time as necessary to recover and come back healthy.. This was in large part due to a concern that, had Ripley worked through the injury, she could’ve potentially aggravated it and wound up missing more time.
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