WWE women’s wrestler Sasha Banks recently appeared on Lilian Garcia’s Making Their Way to the Ring podcast. Here are some additional highlights from the interview:
On Triple H giving women a platform in WWE: “Triple H gave us this platform of letting the women just go, letting the women just do it like the guys. And if it wasn’t for him giving us that push, and us letting him know that we can deliver, where would we be now?”
On being happy WWE no longer refers to their female talents as Divas: “I made sure, once I got signed I bought so many bikinis with a lot of pushup. I was ready. I knew I never wanted to be doing that, but I accepted that that’s probably what I’m going to have to do, like I’m going to have to wrestle models and do bikini contests, but WWE was always the goal.” Banks professed, “I get so much slack on the internet because [fans] are like, ‘oh, she hates all the Divas’ and all this. No, absolutely not. I respect so many women and it’s not them that want to do the bra and panty matches. That’s just during that time. That’s just the era it was. Like, if I was back in that era, I’d be doing that too. It’s just where we’re at right now and moving along with the times. But to me, I always wanted them to change that title. I always hated that butterfly title. Whenever they’d show it, I was like, ‘why? It looks like a toy! It’s a butterfly. That doesn’t mean we’re athletes.’
On the Four Horsewomen all becoming WWE champions: “All of us have been champions now. Goosebumps! Oh my gosh, to me, [Bayley] is my favorite one. We won’t tell [the other Horsewomen] this because, for me, when I went to FCW, I felt like the women were really cutthroat and would push you down the stairs to get somewhere. And I felt, once Bayley came, she made it so much fun and she made it cool to be a so-and-so mark. Like, she announced how much she loved wrestling and I felt like I couldn’t do it because people were like, ‘she’s a mark, she’s a mark.’” Banks recalled, “and seeing [what] an incredible person she was, she inspired me to change so much [of] who I was around NXT because I was scared. I was just guarding myself from the other girls and making sure that I was okay and that my job was safe, but when Bayley came I was like, ‘no, I’m going to have fun. I’m going to do what I love because of her.’”
On wanting to headline WrestleMania against Bayley: “The biggest thing is to main event a WrestleMania with Bayley. She’s my favorite! I mean, a fourway? It’s their dreams too, so I’ll let them have it. But I would love to have it with just Bayley because she’s great. But we had a fatal fourway and I think that’s what really took us off to that next step and fans were going crazy about it, so we can pull it off again.”
