WWE's Doudrop ready to silence critics with Becky Lynch Royal Rumble match 15 years in the making

When WWE's Royal Rumble airs live at 1am on Sunday in the UK, a British WWE superstar will be stepping in the ring ready to take a shot at a title.

But probably not the one you would have expected six months ago.

Doudrop, aka Kimberly Benson, will take on Becky Lynch for the RAW Women's Championship after beating Liv Morgan and Bianca Belair in a triple-threat match to secure her number one contender status.

It's a big booking for a woman who only made her RAW debut in June, basically as a sidekick for Eva Marie, and whose first months were dogged by online fans moaning about the name change that saw her go from Piper Niven to, somewhat inexplicably, Doudrop.

Speaking to the Mirror in the run up to the big match, she told us: "Honestly, it's I feel like I'm in a dream world sometimes. It's such an accelerated, almost meteoric, rise through the ranks, you know.

"It's just as dumbfounding to me to be honest."

A familiar face on the independent wrestling scene over more than 15 years - including stints working for some of the biggest promotions in Japan, NXT UK and even ITV's ill-fated World of Sport wrestling show where she was known as Viper - it's fair to say Doudrop has rolled with the changes to her persona during her main roster run.

"I'm really proud of myself for being able to just take any opportunity that comes up and go, 'yeah, okay, let's try it and let's have some fun while we're doing it'.

"I don't really mind the people that don't know me yet because they're about to get an education.

"And that's the fun part for me. You start to see the people who have made comments that weren't so savoury before and you start to see them being won over.

"The tide was maybe against me trying to go from shiny, happy,