Rhea Ripley has a lot of potential title challengers

One of the advertised points to tonight’s episode of NXT was what’s next for new NXT Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley. Or more likely - who’s next?

Well, we don’t know who specifically, but we saw a long list of who it could be.

The new champ opened the show with a litany of women stepping up to put their name in the hat. This included NXT UK’s Toni Storm (who has has history with Ripley from their time together in UK) and the UK Women’s champ Kay Lee Ray. They were also joined by Candice LeRae, Io Shirai, and Bianca Belair.

This turned into a Teddy Long special as Storm, Ripley, and LeRae faced off and defeated Belair, Shirai, and Ray.

This match was partially to promote Storm’s match with Ray (and Piper Niven) at TakeOver: Blackpool II this Sunday. Toni threw out a title vs. title challenge for World’s Collide is she wins and the Nightmare accepted, but no word if that’s official yet. But a NXT Women’s title vs. UK Women’s title match could be coming our way at the end of the month.

Bianca Belair took the pin in this match, which puts her further down on the list of possible challengers. Io Shirai, despite being on Bianca’s team, was the reason she lost so they may be feuding coming out of this.

After the match, Candice LeRae held the NXT title in her hand for a long while before handing it over to Rhea. Is that our next Women’s title program? Candice vs. Rhea could be a banger of a feud. We’ll have to keep tuning in to find out if that’s on the horizon.

Who would you like to see as the first challenge for the NXT women’s champion?

You can find the results from tonight’s episode at the live blog here.