What is happening with Sasha Banks?
Sasha Banks - The Best in the World?
Sasha Banks is a member of the 'Four Horsewomen', a record-tying four-time Raw Women's Champion, one half of the inaugural Women's Tag-Team Champions alongside Bayley as 'The Boss 'n' Hug Connection' and someone who cares about wrestling more than 99% of her colleagues.
There's a reason many people, including WWE Universal Champion Seth Rollins, believe she's the best wrestler in the world, and why Dash Wilder and Scott Dawson were full of praise for her at the WrestleMania 'State of Tag-Team Wrestling' round-table.
The story of Sasha Banks and Bayley knocking on Vince McMahon's door over and over again until he finally agreed to bring in Women's Tag-Team Titles is a wonderful story in itself, but a wonderful testament to how hard Bayley and Banks work at professional wrestling.
This is something that I think most WWE fans can see. I don't think anyone watching would argue that 'The Boss 'n' Hug Connection' weren't deserving inaugural WWE Women's Tag-Team Champions when they beat five other times at the Elimination Chamber PPV.
I also think most people would've been surprised to see WWE take the belts off of Sasha Banks and Bayley so quickly when they lost the Fatal Four-way match at WrestleMania to The IIconics. Especially as there were so many promises of defending the belt everywhere, including NXT where Banks and Bayley even made an appearance.
Sasha Banks' title reigns
Sadly, this seems to be the story of Sasha Banks' life, she may be a four-time Raw Women's Champion. But she has held the title for a combined total of 82 days with her longest reign only lasting 27 days. Now she can add the Women's Tag Team Titles to the list with 'Boss 'n' Hugs' reign only lasting 46 days.
It's a sad but true fact, but Banks' NXT Women's Title run easily outlasted all her main roster title reigns combined. There's a well-established belief that you can always tell when Banks is losing because she pulls a 'boo-boo face' on her way to the ring. Unfortunately, that is pretty much true, but given the circumstances, I don't think I can blame her all that much.
Sasha Banks and Alexa Bliss argue on Twitter
So, moving past WrestleMania and the shock title loss for Banks and Bayley, we see Alexa Bliss tweet that she believes she can beat either Bayley or Banks, or both together in what seems like a clear set-up for a match on the Raw after WrestleMania.
This prompted Sasha Banks to call Alexa Bliss out for blocking her on Twitter and accuse her of being scared.
This seemed like a fairly bizarre reply and didn't go over well with people online. But, perhaps even more bizarrely, despite the online build-up we didn't see Banks and Bliss pay-it-off on Raw, as Bliss ended up wrestling, and defeating, Bayley instead.
Why wasn't Sasha Banks on Raw?
So why wasn't Sasha Banks on Raw despite it clearly appearing to be the plan given the interaction on social media between her and Alexa Bliss? The truth is, at this stage, we really don't know. But that hasn't stopped there from being a ton of speculation.
Firstly there's this long rant from Banks that seemed to indicate that something had happened that she wasn't happy with.
Whilst we don't know why it's clear that something has happened that has affected Banks emotionally, something that she considers a set-back and something that has taken 'magic' away from her life.
A day later Banks then tweeted that she was pulling out of a scheduled public appearance on the Wendy Williams show, she accompanied that with a tweet explaining her decision, but also including the #IfOnlyYouKnew
There were then conflicting reports that the staff from Wendy Williams show were legitimately upset with Banks for pulling out and would never invite her on the show again until Williams herself clarified that Banks pulled out because of a 'family emergency'
Is there something more going on here?
Well, there a few things that suggest we definitely don't have the full story with the entire situation starting with 'Boss 'N' Hug Connection' losing to The IIconics at Wrestlemania, through Monday Night Raw, to Banks pulling out of the television show. So let's look at the rumors.
Popular, albeit dubious, wrestling scoopster Slice Wrestling tweeted that he'd heard there was an incident backstage at WrestleMania that upset Sasha Banks, possibly leading her to pull out of the show
Then there's the suggestion that Banks had a meltdown backstage at Raw after finding out that she and Bayley were supposed to lose a handicap match to Alexa Bliss.
This rumor has been shared online a lot but doesn't appear to have come from anywhere, so I'd go ahead and ignore it until an official source or legitimate news site reports it.
These reports conflict slightly, with both being about as legitimate as each-other, but there is some concrete, albeit very vague, proof that there is something of note backstage that happened - thanks to the #IfOnlyYouKnew hashtag.
It's clear to me that Beth Phoenix [Copeland] and Sasha Banks are referring to something by using the same hashtag. You can infer that this might relate to a booking decision given that Phoenix is reiterating Natalya's statement that 'they won' (which they didn't).
Other things I've seen speculated are that Banks is unhappy WWE is going to split her from Bayley (not confirmed) and that all of the women in the WrestleMania Tag-Team match were unhappy that the SmackDown Tag-Team Title match stole their planned Tower of Doom spot.
So what is happening with Sasha Banks?
I think it's obvious that something has happened but we can only guess what they may be because they sure aren't going to tell us. With that being said, regardless of whether any of these rumors are true or not, and it really doesn't matter if we ever find out the truth; it's clear that Sasha Banks is going through something at the moment and she needs our support.
She needs our support because he's literally a fantastic wrestler, she fought tirelessly to bring in more opportunities for ALL of the women in the form of the tag-team titles, because Michael Cole shouting 'It's Boss Time' will never not be great, because she's a role model to thousands of young girls and women everywhere and because that's simply the right thing to do.
What are your thoughts? Voice them in the comments section right below!