Possible Reason For Charlotte Flair to Challenge Rhea Ripley At WrestleMania

Vince McMahon may have ulterior motives with the Flair/Ripley match.

At the Royal Rumble we say Charlotte Flair outlast 29 other women and win the Women’s Royal Rumble match. Then on RAW, she teased letting us know who she would challenge at WrestleMania and then said she still needed to think about it.

According to Dave Meltzer in the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Meltzer reports that this move may all be just to help NXT in the ratings against AEW. Meltzer states that this is the latest move to give NXT some new juice. Basically they have seen in the past if you have main roster superstars on NXT there is a good chance they can win the ratings. If one of your top WrestleMania matches is being set up on NXT, well that should really skyrocket the ratings with that theory.

Right now the Flair match on the books is with Ripley for the NXT title. It’s the latest move to give NXT new juice since it fell behind AEW once again in the ratings after the momentum had seemingly turned away from AEW in November and December. While some thought that the AEW vs. NXT deal as a prime concern was over in McMahon’s mind, since the whole idea was to make sure AEW didn’t get strong enough numbers to get the paying television deal that would make them profitable and not going away any time soon. In that sense, McMahon failed in the big picture, with only some little wins like keeping other groups out of Madison Square Garden, which is a big deal to him, but far less important nowadays in the big picture.

Meltzer also goes on to state that if the plan is to have Shayna Baszler somehow to challenge Becky Lynch for the RAW Women’s Championship then Bazler should have won the Royal Rumble to help get her over and establish her to the main roster audience who may not watch NXT.

If this is the plan and Charlotte Flair appears regularly on NXT at least for the build to WrestleMania, it will be interesting to see if that does help any in NXT’s rating battle with AEW.