SummerSlam is now only one day away so unless there are some significant twists on SmackDown tonight, the stage is set. That means Rhea Ripley almost definitely won't be defending her World Title at the premium live event. An angle teasing a World Title match between Ripley and Raquel Rodriguez has been teased for weeks, but whether there's some legitimacy to the latter's knee injury or it's some other reason, that match has not been added to the card.
The Women's Champion Missing SummerSlam
Turns out there's more historical significance to not having Ripley wrestle at SummerSlam than you might have thought. Pointed out by meteroas on X, Ripley will become the first female WWE Superstar with a singles title to not have a match at SummerSlam should that Rodriguez match not manifest at some point in the next 36 hours.
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Having gone through more than a decade's worth of SummerSlam cards, I can confirm meteroas is correct. Even though all women's singles titles haven't necessarily been defended at every SummerSlam since 2013, the champions have at least had matches. In 2013, AJ Lee was Divas' Champion and even though her title wasn't on the line at SummerSlam that year, she did compete, teaming with Big E to take on Dolph Ziggler and Kaitlyn.
Back To The Divas Era
Yes, that's right, this run goes back so far that it started when WWE's female Superstars were still being called Divas. Another SummerSlam show on which the champion competed but their title wasn't on the line is 2015. That was the year Stephanie McMahon called up three women from NXT to kickstart WWE's women's revolution. An elimination match pitting Team Bella, Team PCB, and Team BAD against one another in which Nikki Bella, who was Divas' Champion at the time, competed.
The last time there was simply no female champion on the card was all the way back in 2012. Layla was champion at the time and had no place at that year's SummerSlam. There's a small chance a Ripley title defense gets added to the card at the last minute, but that seems unlikely. If there's not enough room for Becky Lynch vs. Trish Stratus, a match WWE has been building to for months, then there's probably no room for a cobbled-together title match either.
