Rhea Ripley will not defend the WWE Women’s Championship at SummerSlam, and WWE will crown an interim champion in her place. WrestleVotes reported on Fightful Select that Ripley‘s injury forced the company to change several creative plans.
Acting SmackDown general manager Adam Pearce announced the decision in a video released before the July 17th episode of SmackDown. Pearce said Ripley has worked with WWE medical throughout her recovery from a torn meniscus and is close to returning. The nature of the injury rules her out of SummerSlam.
WWE is not stripping the title. Ripley remains recognized as WWE Women’s Champion while the interim championship is decided in a five-woman ladder match.
“The winner of the ladder match becomes the interim WWE Women’s Champion,” Pearce said.
Pearce added that the interim champion faces Ripley when she returns, and that match determines the undisputed champion. Five women qualify through matches held over a two-week span.
WWE has never crowned an interim champion on its main roster before. NXT did it in 2020, when Santos Escobar won a tournament after travel restrictions kept Jordan Devlin (JD McDonough) off programming. Escobar beat Devlin in a ladder match a year later to unify the belts.
WrestleVotes reported on Fightful Select that a proposed singles match between Jade Cargill and Charlotte Flair was among the plans affected. Tiffany Stratton, the WWE Women’s United States Champion, had been slotted to defend her title at SummerSlam in her home state of Minnesota. She is now in the ladder match instead.
A source told WrestleVotes there was a strong internal push for Ripley to take the time needed to fully recover rather than rush back for the event. The concern was that the injury could worsen and create larger problems later. WWE is hopeful she will be ready by the fall.
Night of Champions was reworked in June for the same reason. Ripley came off the event poster, replaced by Stratton, who defended the Women’s United States Championship against Cargill on the show.
Ripley beat Cargill for the WWE Women’s Championship at WrestleMania 42 on April 19th at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. She suffered the injury on May 31st at Clash in Italy while defending against Cargill in a rematch.
Ripley later revealed a partial tear of the meniscus in her right knee. She said the tear sat in an awkward spot, which made recovery harder than expected, and that she could not bend the knee properly or squat without pain.
Ripley wrestled six-woman tag team matches at live events in France and Portugal on June 2 and June 3, teaming with Alexa Bliss and Flair against Fatal Influence. Her last television appearance came on the June 5 episode of SmackDown, where Cargill, Flair, and Stratton confronted her. Her knee was wrapped and she limped to the ring.
Stratton and Cargill have secured spots. Flair faces Nia Jax on SmackDown for another, and three spots were open at the time of the report. SummerSlam takes place August 1st and 2nd at U.S. Bank Stadium in Minneapolis.
Rhea Ripley keeps the championship without wrestling a single match to do it, and that is the rarest call WWE has made in years. No main roster champion has ever been handled this way. The knee gets time, the title stays put, and SummerSlam still gets a championship moment out of it. That is a clean fix for an ugly problem.
The ladder match is where this gets loud. Stratton climbs in front of a Minnesota crowd that will come unglued for her. Cargill still has a score to settle after WrestleMania 42, and three spots remain wide open with qualifiers left to run. Whoever grabs that interim title walks straight into a target, because Ripley is coming back for it. That unification match is already the biggest thing on WWE’s fall calendar.
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