AEW and NXT Wednesday Night War: 3 winners of night #12

Rhea Ripley

When most of the NXT locker room came out to celebrate Rhea Ripley’s win over Shayna Baszler to claim the NXT Women’s Championship, the scene from The Wizard of Oz where everyone celebrated the Wicked Witch of the West melting away.

Ripley, however, needed much more than a bucket of water to topple “The Queen of Spades”. It required her to not only fend off the expected interference from Jessamyn Duke and Marina Shafir, but also a DDT into a chair and an extended period of time in Baszler’s Krirfuda Clutch.

The several minutes where Ripley was locked in Baszler’s choke were particularly excruciating, for her – in kayfabe – and for fans anxious to see her win the title. What made that and the other false finishes work was the underlying dread of yet another successful title defense for Baszler.

The former champ deserves all the credit in the world for her work as the top female – and overall – heel in NXT, but her second reign as champion had reached a point of unrelenting inescapability.

We’d seen this movie before, where a challenger gives Baszler a good fight before putting them to sleep, those moments where Baszler squeezed the air out of Ripley’s lungs played on the fans’ well-placed fears that the same unsatisfying conclusion would play out.

But it didn’t, as Ripley put forth a commendable “Super Cena” impression before hitting an avalanche Riptide for the regime-changing pin. Now, we have a made top star in the women’s division with a host of solid heels — Bianca Belair, Io Shirai, and Dakota Kai among them — to challenge her.