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Rhea Ripley & Iyo Sky Win WWE Women's Tag Team Championship

RHIYO turned the Kabuki Warriors' world upside down.
Joe Baiamonte|
Rhea Ripley
Rhea Ripley | WWE

The Kabuki Warriors' world was turned upside down after they lost their WWE Women's Tag Team Titles to Rhea Ripley and IYO SKY on Monday Night Raw.

The January 5 edition of Raw was the show's first anniversary on Netflix, after debuting on the streaming platform on January 6, 2025. To celebrate the occasion, the show was promoted as a special Stranger Things crossover episode, with the set and intro video themed around the otherworldly sci-fi series.

And to further boost interest in tonight's show, a stacked card was also heavily promoted ahead of time, including the evening's opening bout, which saw RHIYO dethrone Asuka and Kairi Sane as WWE Women's Tag Team Champions.

RHIYO turn the Kabuki Warriors upside down

The tag title match was, unsurprisingly, a scintillating encounter from the opening bell, with all four women bringing the sell-out crowd in the Barclays Center in Brooklyn to the edge of their seats.

Eventually, however, it would be Ripley and SKY who would emerge victorious, ending the Kabuki Warriors latest reign with the gold after Ripley scored the pinfall on Asuka.

RHIYO's relationship comes full circle with emotional tag title victory

Ripley and SKY have become a force to be reckoned with in the women's tag team division over the last few months, but the pair had been long-term rivals before they became partners.

Ripley has famously come up short on several occasions in title matches against IYO, dropping the Women's World Championship to the Genius Of The Sky in early 2025, and then failing to recapture the title from her at WrestleMania 41 and then again at Evolution this past June.

However, instead of running with a continuing in-ring rivalry between the pair, WWE creative opted to put the two together and it has paid huge dividends over the last few months, leading to tonight's emotionally charged victory over the Kabuki Warriors.

Asuka and Kairi's reign as champs was relatively short-lived, having only taken the titles from the team of Charlotte Flair and Alexa Bliss on the November 10, 2025, episode of Raw. This most recent reign was their third as champions.

As for the new champions, time will tell whether they retain them all the way to a major defense at WrestleMania 42 at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas, or whether they implode on the Road to WrestleMania and end up coming face-to-face once again on the Grandest Stage of All.

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Joe Baiamonte
JOE BAIAMONTE

Joe Baiamonte is a contributing writer for The Takedown On SI, joining the team in April, 2025. Joe has been covering professional wrestling, sports and entertainment for over a decade, serving as editor at SPORTbible between 2014 and 2018 - where he helped the team to three consecutive Football Blogging Awards - and as head of sport at Unilad. Joe has written for numerous outlets in the United Kingdom and United States, including The Sportsman, Sporf, Pubity, GiveMeSport and The Sportster, interviewing the likes of Neymar, Harry Kane, Ruud Gullit, Triple H, Ric Flair, Cody Rhodes, Becky Lynch, Rey Mysterio, Aaron Boone, Alex Cora, Chris Sale and Chase Uttley. He has a BA (Hons) degree in Journalism and Broadcasting from the University of Salford and currently resides in Manchester, England, having been raised just down the road in Burnley. He briefly moved to Croatia with his family after the birth of his son, where he spent an entire summer writing on the beach and eating squid.

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