What Took Place Before Evolution? (Contains Minor Spoiler)

Starting in the dark. This Sunday’s Evolution pay per view is one of the most important nights in the history of women’s wrestling, featuring a full card of women’s wrestling on the grand WWE stage. One of the drawing cards of the show was to have every women’s title defended, but there was one notably absent, partially because it doesn’t officially exist just yet.

According to Wrestlinginc.com, the pre-show dark match before Evolution saw NXT UK Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley successfully defend her title against Dakota Kai. At the moment, the NXT UK Women’s Title has yet to officially be announced on NXT UK TV. In another note, the match took place at 6:45 EST, meaning that the Kickoff Show was taped in advance of the actual show.

Here’s the champ in action.

Io Shirai vs. Rhea Ripley - Semifinal Match: Mae Young Classic, Oct. 24, 2018

Opinion: I can understand why it wasn’t included on the actual show and it was a good idea not to go with making the show longer. The show had a good pace and finished at a reasonable time so adding another match to the card would have messed things up a bit. There is plenty of time for Ripley and Kai later, as Ripley certainly seems to be the kind of woman WWE would love to push to the moon.

Thomas Hall has been a wrestling fan for over thirty years and has seen over 50,000 wrestling matches. He has also been a wrestling reviewer since 2009 with over 5,000 full shows covered. You can find his work at kbwrestlingreviews.com, or check out his Amazon author page with 28 wrestling books. His latest book is the the Complete 2003 Smackdown Reviews.

Get the latest and greatest in professional wrestling news by signing up for our daily email newsletter. Just look below for “GET EXCLUSIVE UPDATES” to sign up. We are proud to offer our popular Wrestling Rumors app and encourage you to download it for an optimized user experience. It is available for Android and also on iOS. Thank you for reading!

What do you think of Ripley and Kai? Should this have been on the show? Let us know in the comments below.