This Sunday brings us one of the most significant dates on the pro wrestling calendar. The one and only WWE Royal Rumble is soon upon us, folks! “One and only” of course referring to the day, and not the match. After all, we have two Rumble matches to look forward to! The field is wide open for both iterations of these matches as well, a litany of favorites to choose from! And not least of which is the Boss herself, Sasha Banks!
This is part of a mini series in which I’ll be looking at ten favorites to win both the men’s and women’s Royal Rumble matches this Sunday! And you guys get to pick the subject of the final two previews! You can vote on this matter right here! Remember, the voting here closes at the stroke of midnight on Friday night! Now then, let’s get onto this particular preview!
Sasha Banks – Relevant Stats
- WWE Debut: 2015 (Debuted in NXT in 2012)
- First Rumble appearance: 2018
- She has never won a Rumble match.
- This will be her second Rumble appearance.
- She has amassed three total eliminations.
- She is a five time WWE Raw Women’s Champion.
- Current betting odds: +1200
How 2019 Went For Sasha Banks:
Well she certainly had an interesting year, can’t say she didn’t! She started out the year with a major match, challenging Ronda Rousey for the WWE Raw Women’s Championship at the Royal Rumble, but came up short. Then, she and her best friend Bayley ushered in the spring by living out one of their dreams. The WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles were established, largely due to the two of them openly pushing for their creation. So it was fitting when the two of them won a special Elimination Chamber match, beating five other teams to become the inaugural champions.
In spite of WWE giving us every reason to assume that they would never take tag team wrestling seriously, it was still difficult not to get swept up into this. It was a pretty historic occurrence, as women’s tag titles haven’t been a thing in WWE since 1989. For those who knew the story, it was pretty cool seeing the two of them achieve something like this. And we were promised that these titles would be special, defended on all brands – including NXT! Bayley and Sasha even appeared on NXT shortly after winning them to promote this fact.
It seemed likely that they would end up defending against the Sky Pirates, Kairi Sane and Io Shirai. They were the premiere women’s tandem on NXT after all! This bout could’ve perhaps even taken place on a Takeover! Ahh, what an incredible match that would’ve been…
Yeah… it didn’t happen.
Sasha and Bayley’s only televised title defense was against Tamina and Nia Jax at Fastlane the next month. And, well, that’s a pretty far cry from Kairi and Io. Then, at WrestleMania, less than two full months after they won the titles, they lost them to the IIconics. Who uh, sure did hold onto them for four months…
Their title reign was absolutely nothing like what it was seemingly meant to be on the surface. I don’t even feel like it was what we were promised, so I can imagine it was nothing like what Sasha Banks and Bayley were promised. And after this, many rumors cropped up of how upset the two of them were over it. Sasha fed into this quite a bit by outright disappearing. She really appeared done with WWE, who took quite some time to coax her back into the fray. During this time there was a lot of speculation that she’d end up jumping ship to AEW, and for good reason.
But it was not to be. It’s still somewhat up to debate what all even happened, but eventually the situation was resolved. After a four month long absence, the night after SummerSlam, Sasha Banks made her return.
She did so with a new look and quickly established herself as a hot heel.
Sasha came back at the expense of the injured Natalya, assaulting her and mocking her deceased father. After being a babyface for the vast majority of her time on the main roster, finally Sasha Banks turned back to the dark side. For those like me who have been following her since the beginning in NXT, this was very welcome, as she made her name as an awesome heel on the black and gold brand.
Becky Lynch made the save for Nattie on that night, beginning a feud that would last throughout the Fall. This culminated in a Hell In A Cell match at the titular event, and it was a damn good one if I do say so myself. This would be true even if it didn’t have the luxury of being side by side with one of the worst ever later on in the night! Sasha was ultimately vanquished however, en route to her and Bayley (who also turned to reform their team) being drafted to SmackDown. Sasha closed out the year as primarily being backup for the WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion.
Where does that leave her chances?
Pretty good, in theory. Just based on her own merits, in a vacuum, Sasha seems like a strong candidate. Presuming she sticks around long enough, she will inevitably end up winning one of these one year or another. But the timing right now might make it a little awkward. She and Bayley just started their dominance over SmackDown’s women’s division and it doesn’t feel like something that’s going to end any time soon. So she’s probably not going over to Raw to challenge Becky again, and she’s also probably not going after Bayley either. If you think of that way, it’s not particularly she’ll win…
What would her story be?
…but if you look at it from another angle, it’s not hard to see where this could go if she did end up winning. It’d be a similar situation to Randy Orton and Bray Wyatt a few years ago or, if you want an actually successful story, Batista and Triple H back in 2005. Bayley would be pushing hard for Sasha to make the move to Raw, not wanting to face her. Sasha would play along but eventually reveal that she totally intends to go after Bayley after all! I don’t expect it, but it’s an angle that’d be worth playing with and Sasha and Bayley have, in some ways, been teasing a split for like two years. They gotta have a big collision somewhere, some time. What better place than Mania?
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