WWE Superstar Rhea Ripley Reveals Shocking Injury Update

WWE star Rhea Ripley offered a blunt recovery update this week after a video of her walking at a training facility circulated online and sparked talk of an imminent return.

The Australian wrestler has been out since tearing the meniscus in her right knee at Night of Champions in June. She later had surgery and vacated the WWE Women’s Championship on July 17.

Fans seized on Wednesday’s TikTok clip showing Ripley moving quickly around what looked like a wrestling camp. Many assumed the former champion was close to stepping back into the ring.

Ripley shut that down in the comments.

“Walking and wrestling are very different,” she wrote. “Learnt how to walk last week. So don’t get too excited. Stay patient with me.”

The message made clear that basic mobility is only an early step. Wrestling demands cutting, jumping, taking bumps and generating power off the same knee that required surgery.

No official return date has been announced. Ripley has been sidelined since June, and officials have not offered a public timetable.

WWE official Adam Pearce said in July that five Superstars would compete in a ladder match at SummerSlam for an interim Women’s Championship. Chelsea Green won that match.

Pearce also said Ripley would receive a title opportunity against the interim champion once she is medically cleared. That match remains on hold.

Ripley first addressed the surgery on Instagram on Aug. 7.

“Surgery was never a first option for me, but it got to the point that it was needed. First one down. Hopefully no more,” she wrote. “I’ve survived. Now it’s time to start thriving again so I can get back to what I love to do!”

She did not give a target date then either. Given that she only recently relearned how to walk, a return before the end of the year appears unlikely.

Ripley is a former Women’s Royal Rumble winner. In 2023 she became the first woman to win the match after entering at No. 1, lasting more than an hour and collecting multiple eliminations. She has also held world titles on more than one occasion and regularly worked as a headliner.

That workload is part of why the injury landed so hard. IYO SKY, who teamed with Ripley as Rhiyo, told The Ringer Wrestling Show she has not spoken much with her friend since the injury but understood the need for rest.

“So, I’m not a texting person. I’m not phone call person. So we haven’t talked too much, like talk, talk, talk,” SKY said. “But I totally understand what she’s doing and why she needed to take time for now. Because she — I really know she was being too busy, way busier than me. She was all over the world. She had main events, she had a championship match, and she had media interviews.”

SKY recalled Ripley’s packed schedule around Crown Jewel in Australia.

“I was thinking about when we were Rhiyo, like she had been to Crown Jewel in Australia, Perth, and she was crazy busy. I always watching by her. And, yeah, sometimes I think about her, oh my gosh, she’s overworking, something like that. Now she’s injured, that makes me sad, but definitely she needs time to take time, definitely she needs. But also I know her personality. She will come back when she is become much stronger than before.”

Sports medicine literature often places return to high-impact sport after meniscal repair in the four-to-six-month range, depending on the repair, strength testing and sport-specific demands. Wrestling sits at the demanding end of that scale.

For now, Ripley’s public message is simple: walking is not wrestling, the work is just beginning, and fans should wait.

WWE has not issued a further medical statement beyond the July title vacancy and the promised return match when she is cleared.

Ripley’s absence leaves the women’s division without one of its most consistent main-event draws while Green holds the interim title and other challengers fill weekly television.

The next confirmed checkpoint is medical clearance itself. Until then, the company and Ripley are asking for patience.