Rhea Ripley has revealed the behind-the-scenes origin of her Riptide finisher, telling ESPN that fellow wrestler Shane Haste was the one who pitched the pumphandle slam that became her signature move.
The move is a pumphandle slam where Ripley drops to her knees on the impact.
“I was just trying things. I was practicing with Tegan and Shane was like feeding me different moves to try, and he’s like, ‘try the pump handle slam,’ and I was like, ‘okay.’ I tried it and I was like, ‘that’s really cool,’ and I did it for a little bit going into the second Mae Young Classic and then obviously NXT UK, and I would sit out with it and that was the way that I would do it for a while, and then my butt just hurt too bad. I was like, I can’t do this. This is going to really screw up my back later on. So I’m just going to start going to my knees. So that’s how it all like, came to life. It was really Shane Haste’s idea.”
Haste worked in WWE NXT alongside Nick Miller as TM-61 before later runs in NJPW with Mikey Nicholls as TMDK. He also worked under the Slapjack gimmick on the main roster. Ripley separately revealed on the newly-released What’s Your Story with Stephanie McMahon that she went into the WrestleMania 42 match against Jade Cargill carrying stitches and a pulled groin from a dog-related injury.
If you use quotes from this article, please credit ESPN and include a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
