Rhea Ripley said she has a slight tear in her meniscus, and the injury has already left her out for about a month as SummerSlam 2026 talk builds around her status. She said the knee is still healing, but her return timing is up in the air.
Rhea Ripley’s knee update
“I hurt my knee. I got a slight tear in my meniscus, it’s just healing. It’s getting there. It’s getting stronger. I just can’t bend it very well. Kind of need to bend, guys,” Ripley said to Nina Drama. The detail that matters here is not just the diagnosis; it is the function loss. When a performer says she cannot bend her knee well, the question is no longer whether she can work through pain, but whether she can safely move through the full range a match demands.
“I tore it in a really weird spot, so it’s kind of a little bit up in the air with just how fast my body recovers. But I’ve been out for probably about a month now. I think it’s been a month and one week,” she said. That leaves WWE with a champion whose timeline depends on how quickly the knee responds, not on a fixed return window.
WWE Women’s Championship pressure
Ripley’s absence has already stretched beyond one appearance. She had not appeared at Night Champions last month and had not been on Friday Night SmackDown to defend Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss against Jade Cargill, Michin and B-Fab since June 5. That is the practical consequence for WWE: one injured champion can ripple through multiple on-screen pairings before a return date is even set.
On May 31, 2026, Ripley defended the WWE Women’s Championship at Clash in Italy against Jade Cargill at Inalpi Arena in Torino di Sangro, Italy. She had recaptured the title at WrestleMania 42 before that. Those milestones make the current pause more notable, because the title picture has already been built around her, and now the schedule has to absorb an uncertain recovery instead of a clean handoff.
What Ripley can do next
“It feels better. It still starts to hurt and throb and it gets tired. I can’t get up or bend down really or kind of move side to side while crouching. We’ll see how it goes,” Ripley said. That is the most useful guide for the immediate future: she is improving, but not enough to promise a return, and that leaves her next in-ring appearance dependent on whether the knee can handle movement rather than just rest. For WWE, that means planning around absence, not counting on a comeback date.
