As much as I wanted to just yell my two cents into the void and call it a day, the wrestling community has been incapable of letting go of the story of Sasha Banks and Naomi, the then-current WWE women’s tag team champions, turning in their belts to management, citing a lack of respect for them, the championships they held, other grievances, and then walking out of the company, during the middle of an episode of RAW in which they were already booked and advertised for.
My knee-jerk reaction to this whole story was it’s a work (wrestling lingo for scripted), primarily because it was acknowledged on television, and has been repeatedly acknowledged on television since it occurred. Although professional wrestling is an always moving, always evolving entity that has shown great ability to adapt, typically throughout history if something has been genuinely legitimate along this kind of nature, it’s usually not acknowledged on television, to such in-depth detail.
Usually if something genuinely controversial happens, then suddenly it’s an injury angle, or the offender was assaulted off-camera, leading to them having been rushed to the local hospital, or some kind of hokey excuse to justify why someone isn’t showing. The WWE acknowledging and naming Sasha Banks and Naomi and the specific things they did, doesn’t exactly sound the alarm of legitimate controversy, but more like an elaborate storyline is being executed instead.
Furthermore, it sets up some future storytelling opportunities, like Naomi having an excuse to break away from the tag team scene to where she can ultimately join the Samoan Bloodline group, since she’s the real-life wife to Jimmy Uso, and would make an excellent addition to the team and give them a designated female member to start collecting women’s titles. But instead of a vanilla breakup storyline with Sasha Banks, she can instead vanish from television outright, before being unveiled at a later date, when people might actually have begun to believe she was indefinitely removed from the company.
For Sasha Banks however, I’m not really sure how this benefits her, other than the fact that it gets her out of tag team purgatory and capable of vying for a women’s championship sooner rather than later, without having to eat a loss in order to drop the tag titles.
And frankly, it’s only because Sasha Banks is involved in this at all, is the only think that clouds up the waters that it might not be a work, even though I maintain that it is, solely because of the fact that Sasha Banks has already walked out on the company before, and if the reported reasons for this one are true, then it’s basically history repeating itself, and she probably just needs a minute to chill and come back to earth before ultimately coming back from yet another self-centered hiatus.
The thing is though, if this isn’t a work, then I have to think that Sasha Banks is kind of screwed. Her wrestling career won’t be over, because she can always jump to AEW, and there’s no doubt the WWE would bring her back, because I’ve always said that Vince McMahon would hire the murderer of his wife if he thought there was money to be made with them, and Sasha Banks would be no exception.
The difference would more likely be the reception she gets from her peers in the industry, because if legitimate, this would be the second time that Sasha has walked out on the company because more or less, she didn’t want to eat a shit sandwich of not being in a prominent, championship-caliber program for a few minutes. The problem is, there is nobody in the entire history of the industry where a shit sandwich or fifty were not on their menu at varying points in their careers, and I’d guess that her peers would be less than enthused with her sense of entitlement and unwillingness to go through the grind as everyone has to in their careers.
In wrestling speak, if this is a legitimate situation, then there’s bound to be a lot of the mythical, heat, on both of them, but more on Sasha Banks. It might not sound like such a big deal, but heat has been known to have derailed even the most promising of careers throughout the history of the business.
By now, I’ve heard all sorts of arguments from the endless rabbling scuttlebutt of the internet community, as well as random discussions with my circle of bros that I like to bullshit about wrestling with. Real or not, it’s good that the perception is that both Sasha and Naomi both know their worth, which makes flexing on the company remotely possible, but when the day is over, if this really isn’t a work, then Naomi is probably more critical to retain than Sasha is.
Being an Anoa’I by law as well as a good worker means she has influential backing within the company as well as a role in a storyline that will eventually require her. But as for Sasha, as much of a fan of the worker I am, if this is legitimate, then I kind of lose some respect for her, because I’m feeling like she thinks she’s a little too good for the business to not solely be in championship storylines.
Sasha might know her worth, but it’s not like she isn’t still ultimately replaceable; Charlotte and Becky Lynch are still the faces of the women’s division. Bianca Bel Air is the present and future. Bayley, Asuka and Rhea Ripley are strong workers, Alexa Bliss is still wildly popular, and there’s a ton of women’s talent out there that could be poached or developed, and no one talent will ever be bigger than the industry.
The bottom line is that I still think this is a work, and it’s only a matter of time in which both of them come back, with Naomi joining the Bloodline, and Sasha probably being a masked assailant of Ronda Rousey or something, after she decimates the division because she’ll seemingly always booked to the moon. But if it isn’t a work, then this’ll probably be the beginning of the end for Sasha Banks, and hopefully Mercedes Varnado has made enough friends or can get hooked up through Snoop Dogg, to transition into a performing career.
