Welcome one and all to the RAW RECAP presented by THE REVELLEUTION! WrestleMania continues to creep ever closer with the clash between Rhea Ripley and Becky Lynch for the Women’s World Championship the lead women’s match for the Raw brand. With Nia Jax now out of the title picture, what’s next between Lynch and Ripley? And who will emerge victorious as the newly villainous Candice LeRae faces Ivy Nile? Let’s get into it, and find out…
JACKIE REDMOND and CATHY KELLEY handled interview duties.
RHEA RIPLEY held her troops in line of The Judgement Day backstage in the clubhouse. Bluntly telling JD McDonagh to actually win a match for once.
Singles Match
CANDICE LERAE w/h INDI HARTWELL Vs IVY NILE w/h MAXXINE DUPRI
Neither woman got an entrance. Ivy took down LeRae right from the bell and hit some strikes. A shoulder knockdown followed then a Single Leg Dropkick in the corner. A Delayed Suplex got Nile a two count. LeRae used a sneaky toss to send Nile face-first into the middle rope, and then attempted to try and get Hartwell to attack Nile while she distracted the ref, but Hartwell was too conflicted and Nile got back in the ring before Hartwell could reach her.
LeRae tried to get Hartwell to attack again when she sent Nile out of the ring, but Hartwell refused. So LeRae decked Dupri off the apron, and then faked an ankle injury like last week. Again Hartwell refused to attack, so Nile got back in but the referee blocked a charge, believe LeRae’s faking. That allowed LeRae to scoop up Nile with a pin and use feet on the ropes to steal the win in a short, awkward match. Hartwell looked conflicted and didn’t let LeRae raise her arm, so LeRae gloated and skipped away while Hartwell stayed at ringside.
Rhea Ripley with Dominik Mysterio went to the ring for a promo. Ripley made reference to certain live event footage going viral when she said she felt she didn’t get enough attention. But changed it to say that Becky Lynch was the one not giving her attention, and mocked Lynch for picking so many fights. She now claimed she was impatient and objected to Lynch not giving her full attention.
Of course that made BECKY LYNCH come out to the ring. Lynch tried to mock Ripley by saying she only came out to confront her only after Lynch had been in matches. A predictable, but accurate, line that Ripley rarely wrestles on Raw anymore, to which Ripley again referenced her rival house show videos to say that she didn’t need to compete to get the fans’ attention. Lynch lost the crowd a bit, going off on rant about how she busts her ass in the ring rather than posts it online. Ripley brought the crowd back in when she mocked Lynch for being a cockroach. ‘Hard to kill, but not impossible’. Then she got personal by saying Lynch’s daughter would look up to Ripley and call her Mami.
Lynch got triggered and sounded emotional and ranted again but how that wasn’t a funny to her, and brought up the fact that her late father never got to meet her daughter. Mysterio backed up Ripley, and got sucker punched for her trouble. A fight finally kicked off between Lynch and Ripley, and Ripley easily got the edge with a Big Boot then sent Lynch into the ring post. When Ripley went to the outside to check on Mysterio, Lynch jumped off the ring steps to deck Ripley briefly before another quick brawl happened. Mysterio got decked again by Lynch before a third brief brawl before referees and Mysterio separated the apparent stalemate.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
A very disappointing episode of Raw. The only match on the show was a short match, barely a couple minutes, and even then it was a dud with most of it spent with the outside of the ring spot. This experiment with LeRae just isn’t working and it’s doing no one any favours with how cringey it all looks. Meanwhile the segment with Lynch and Ripley also didn’t deliver. The crowd doesn’t want to boo Ripley who even as a Heel is mega over, and Lynch being an emotional babyface doesn’t connect the same way the fans used to the badass The Man character. Plus the near crying came out of nowhere which further threw the crowd, only for Lynch to act like nothing happened and go straight to a fight. It was a quite a mess and wasn’t a good way to hype a WrestleMania title match.
That’s your lot for this week! Be sure to stop by in seven days’ time for the next edition of the RAW RECAP! See you then!