Rhea Ripley suffered a knee injury back at Clash in Italy, but there has been no update on how severe the injury is as of writing.

The Women's Champion missed Night of Champions in Saudi Arabia last month and could now miss SummerSlam, with WWE yet to share a timeline surrounding her return.

While it's rare for Champions to be injured and then stripped of their championships, it does still happen, and there was a belief that if Ripley was on hiatus past The Biggest Party of the Summer, she would be stripped of the title.

It seems that this won't be the case, Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful recently noted on Select Answers, that it's unlikely that they will take her title off her, since they aren't even booking Liv Morgan to defend her title in Ripley's absence.

Liv Morgan is set to defend her Championship at SummerSlam, but Ripley was able to defend her title in Italy just a few weeks ago, while Morgan hasn't for several months. Which means that Ripley is expected to keep her title with her.

Aside from the announcement that Ripley's knee was being assessed and making the injury official, WWE hasn't provided any updates on Ripley over the past few weeks. This means that fans are in the dark when it comes to her prognosis and the severity of the injury.

It could be that Ripley is making plans to make her return in the coming weeks, but WWE wants this to come as a huge surprise for the SmackDown fans.

Now that CM Punk is on SmackDown, it appears that the USA Network has what they want when it comes to a main focus of the show, but they would still be pushing for Rhea Ripley.

SmackDown has struggled in recent months, since it's always seen as the B-rated show, but now that it has moved back to two hours, it seems that it continues to struggle. There appears to be a number of changes coming for SmackDown, and Rhea Ripley's status afterward will be interesting.

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