Maxxine Dupri's first Women's Intercontinental Championship defense was an uphill battle, but she walked out showing the world why she is still the champion.
Maxxine Dupri walked into Hershey with everything to prove, and everything to lose. Dupri defended her Women's Intercontinental Championship against old rival Ivy Nile Monday, and after a particularly scrappy performance from the new champion, Dupri walked out of "WWE Raw" with her first-ever successful title defense under her belt.
Nile was thoroughly uninterested in Dupri's success story, as shown by her flash pin at the beginning of the match. Dupri, however, was not about to go down without a fight. Despite being manhandled by "The Pitbull" early on in the match, Dupri kept her head above water as she combined scrappy striking power with Dungeon-made holds and submissions to stay in the match and keep her championship ambitions alive. Nile continued her attempts to snuff out Dupri's fire several times, with a particularly nasty Hanging Dragon Sleeper off the middle rope sending Dupri into a fit of screams, but Dupri's confidence, and rage, only continued to grow as the match went on. Her unpolished strikes became vitriolic, and her struggles faded away to self-assured kip-ups and roars. Dupri fought through every hurdle the more-experienced Nile threw at her, and ultimately, Dupri cinched in her first successful title defense with a gruesome Ankle Lock-turned-leg joint lock on her former friend and cruel adversary.
Monday marked Dupri's inaugural title defense, and with a victory on her ledger, she is set to continue her Women's Intercontinental Championship reign, which clocks in at 29 days and counting. Dupri snatched the title from multi-time women's world titleholder Becky Lynch at WWE's most recent venture to Madison Square Garden, and while Lynch has been rather vocal with her protests and match-related conspiracy theories on social media, neither Lynch, nor any further competitors, have stepped up to challenge for Dupri's Women's Intercontinental Championship as of writing.
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Read the original article on Wrestling Inc.
Category: General Sports
