Rhea Ripley’s return is a needed boost for the WWE women’s division

After four months away from in-ring action, Rhea Ripley is finally cleared to compete for WWE. While she remained present and was one of the main focal points of The Judgement Day, the women’s division was still without an important personality within the group. Now that Ripley is back, she adds an important name to the depth that was severely hurting the main roster women’s division.

There is a lot of praise Triple H for since his takeover of both WWE creative and talent relations. But that doesn’t mean everything has translated well on television. There’s still a gap when it comes to the women’s division and its place in the promotion. Weekly shows consistently have a single match or segment dedicated to the women’s roster and with five hours of television combined between Monday Night Raw and SmackDown, which is simply not enough. That can’t be attributed to lack of depth, because WWE has a slew of talented women that would benefit from continued reps on camera. This causes fans to wonder if there is just a “disinterest” in booking the women’s division like that of their male peers.

Ripley hasn’t suffered from such a situation. She’s arguably the main attraction in The Judgement Day and gets some of the biggest interactions in arenas and on social media. Ripley was long tabbed as a future star for WWE, and her direction was clear ever since her transformation into the recognizable character today.

She’s wrestled three matches so far, two of which were mixed tag matches on non-televised shows, then the returned to TV with her match against Roxanne Perez on the October 18 edition of WWE NXT. She may have looked a little winded at the end of the ordeal, but she was able to hit all her marks and still delivered well for the fans – a win for all parties involved.

Ripley is one of the few names in the women’s division that can immediately get inserted into the title picture and fans will see her as a believable and accepted foil to either champion. For example, a challenge that Liv Morgan faced is that many didn’t think she stood a chance against Ronda Rousey, which impacted her overall appeal in that feud. Ripley wouldn’t have to deal with that detraction going against either Rousey or Bianca Belair.

In fact, when it comes to Ripley versus Belair, this is the type of feud that can power the next generation of women’s wrestling in the WWE. They could main event any of the big pillar events for WWE and fans would be invested in their intertwining stories.

WWE’s women’s division needed a boost and Rhea Ripley’s return to the ring has created that space. She’s a credible performer in all aspects of the game and fans should be prepared to see her in the title picture very soon.