Triple H has revealed that it was Vince McMahon’s decision to book Rhea Ripley vs Charlotte Flair for the NXT Women’s Championship at WrestleMania 36.

Over the past couple of weeks, ever since her Royal Rumble win, Charlotte Flair had been teasing that she could use her title opportunity at WrestleMania against NXT Women’s Champion Rhea Ripley.

Before Ripley could dream about booking a date against Flair at the Showcase of Immortals, she had to defeat Bianca Belair at NXT TakeOver: Portland.

On Sunday night, The Nightmare did exactly that, but after her match vs The EST of NXT, she was attacked by The Queen in the middle of the ring, who accepted her challenge for a match at WrestleMania.

This is the first time in WWE history that a Royal Rumble winner will use their title opportunity to challenge for an NXT championship at WWE’s biggest show of the year, and according to Triple H, it was all Vince McMahon’s idea.

The Game was asked during a media call after TakeOver: Portland how much say the USA Network had on the storyline between Flair and Ripley in a way to help NXT on Wednesday nights, to which he said they had no involvement.

He said, via Wrestling Inc: “Actually, USA had no involvement in it, really at all. I believe that this was, to be honest, it was shocking to me when it was first mentioned to me.

“I believe that this was really just a decision from Vince's part on understanding where the other stories are going for the women.

“As you build forward on these things, you have opportunities where you look in a moment of time, and you go, does Charlotte go after [SmackDown Women's Champion] Bayley and Sasha Banks on that side? Does she move into that realm?

“Does she come after [RAW Women's Champion] Becky Lynch? All the things that you have sort of seen before, and you're looking to get fresh, and build and new.

“And I think you see that with Shayna Baszler going after Becky Lynch, and you see that in different ways on SmackDown with where they're going so this was a way of Charlotte Flair needing to be in that big epic role. I think it really had nothing more to do with that.

“I think people put too much stock into building up other things. It's easy to put your tinfoil hat on and start to talk about stuff, and I'm sure just even saying that, everybody will be like, 'Oh my God, there's no way they didn't...' Whatever, you believe what you want.

“It really comes down to that, this is good storytelling and that's what the goal is here, it's just really good storytelling across the board."

Triple H also praised all three women from TakeOver: Portland (Flair, Ripley and Belair), indicating there are bigger things to come from all of them.

Flair will face Ripley for the NXT Women’s title at WrestleMania, but it will also be interesting to see if Belair squeezes her way into the match as well after another strong performance.