Wrestling legend says 32-year-old 6 ft tall superstar will be one of Rhea Ripley's toughest challengers to date (Exclusive)

Rhea Ripley has been WWE's most dominant female star in 2023 despite not having too many title defenses. Wrestling legend Bill Apter thinks her upcoming challenger will be one of her most challenging.

On the latest episode of The Wrestling Time Machine, Bill Apter was making predictions for Payback alongside Teddy Long and host Mac Davis. He was asked about Ripley's upcoming Women's World Title defense at Payback 2023.

Rhea Ripley is set to face the 6-foot-tall, 32-year-old Raquel Rodriguez at Payback. While Apter predicted a win for Ripley, he believes that it will be one of her toughest challenges to date:

"I don't either. But the ferocity that [Raquel Rodriguez] has been showing is going to make this a brawl - it's going to be a Pier-Six Brawls that we used to talk about all the time. I think it's going to be really tough, and it's going to be one of [Rhea] Ripley's toughest matches," Apter said. (4:27-4:49)

You can watch the full video below:

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Rhea Ripley gave an interesting instruction on NXT this week

During her tag team match with Dominik Mysterio against Dragon Lee and Lyra Valkyria on NXT this week, Rhea Ripley was seen instructing the latter to headbutt her, and she happily obliged.

Ripley and Dominik suffered a crushing defeat, with Dragon Lee firmly putting himself in a position to challenge Dominik Mysterio for the NXT North American Championship.

It will be interesting to see how things play out. Unfortunately, we may never get an Evolution-Armageddon 2004 type of scenario where every member holds a title or accolades with The Judgment Day. That opportunity went away when Finn Balor lost to Seth Rollins at SummerSlam 2023.

Do you think Raquel can dethrone Rhea? Sound off in the comments section below.

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