In case you have not heard, Sasha Banks has had her name in the rumor mill as of late, and all for seemingly the wrong reasons. As we saw last week at WrestleMania, The IIconics dethroned Sasha Banks and Bayley in a Fatal Four Way match to become the 2nd ever Women’s Tag Team Champions. I personally predicted Sasha/Bayley would retain simply because The IIconics already defeated them and it seemed like they really didn’t get a chance to have a proper run with them.
Sasha Banks reportedly not only tried to leave WWE over WrestleMania, but she and Bayley held a protest in the locker room voicing their displeasure at the decision which was seemingly made last minute. Her reaction has caused debate as to whether or not this kind of reaction is warranted. What we should understand that Sasha, however, is a unique case.
Upon first glance, Sasha Banks appears to be one of the more accomplished women competitors on the roster. She’s a former NXT Women’s Champion, a four-time women’s champion, one of the first ever women’s tag team champions, competed in the first-ever women’s Hell In A Cell and Iron Man matches and one of the leaders behind the improvement in the quality of women’s matches in this new era of WWE. She certainly isn’t a slouch and has a Hall of Fame resume if you take all of her accomplishments at face value. However, if you were to carefully analyze the career arc of Sasha, it might be easy to see why she is frustrated.
As I mentioned before, Sasha Banks is a four-time women’s champion. However, three of those reigns came in one year, and she lost to Charlotte the first time she had a title defense each time. The last time she held the title was almost two years ago, where she won it at Summerslam, but only held it for a week as Bliss would defeat her the week after. Her tag team title reign with Bayley has also proven to be uneventful as the team only held the titles for one PPV. So, if you didn’t get the picture, Sasha can go, but just not very long.
Sasha certain doesn’t lack confidence if she lacks anything else. From the grandiose entrances she made in NXT, to her moniker of “The Boss”, everything about Sasha screams someone who invests in herself and believes should be at the top of her class. That’s a valuable trait to have in any WWE superstar. However, it appears Sasha has had a huge conflict in knowing that she doesn’t control her own fate, and that WWE can grant opportunities just as well as they can take them away.
We can debate on whether or not Sasha’s reaction to knowing she and Bayley would be dropping the tag titles was warranted, but what we should all agree on is that Sasha has a passion in not only herself, and this business. In my opinion, I do think The IIconics were deserving of winning the titles, but we can’t underestimate the journey Sasha and Bayley took to become tag team champions. Perhaps it didn’t get as much attention as warranted (with all of the superstars and all of the titles that have been heavily compressed into two shows, can we really be blamed?), but they did make it happen, didn’t they?
Sasha and Bayley wanted the opportunity to defend against competitors from RAW, Smackdown and NXT. They didn’t get the chance to fully make the titles what they wanted it to be. It is certainly fair to say that they didn’t get the chance to do that. I do believe they should have at least been able to do what they said out of respect for them being the inaugural champions. It can be also easy to see by some why The IIconics winning the titles might be insulting to Sasha because you could say they are not fully established and are more about comedy than in-ring competition.
We can debate about professionalism, and I certainly am not the one to dictate who is and isn’t deserving of winning a title. But we should acknowledge that this frustration from Sasha has surely been building up over time, and it may have reached its boiling point. On the same night Sasha and Bayley lost the tag titles, she also wanted Becky Lynch and Charlotte, her NXT colleagues, take part in the first-ever women’s WrestleMania main-event, something I’m sure she believes she thought she earned as well.
Unfortunately, while Sasha calls herself the boss, she’s also an employee. This means that there is someone she has to answer to and her destiny is not fully in her hands. If Sasha were to formally request her release, it may be hard to blame her.
Do you believe that Sasha Banks’ displeasure is warranted? Or is it simply a matter of unprofessionalism?
