Sash Banks’ WrestleMania Woes Continue
Coming off the best WrestleMania of the past few years, most of the decisions for the pay-per-view were the right ones. Unfortunately, one of the correct decisions is leaving one of the company’s greatest wrestlers with a glaring hole on her resume. Sasha Banks lost her SmackDown Women’s championship to Bianca Belair in the first ever one on one match to feature two black women.
Bianca Belair (bottom) defeats Sasha Banks (top) at WrestleMania to become the SmackDown Women’s Champion. (via WWE)
Banks has won eight championships in her time in WWE, however, losing once again at WrestleMania drops Banks’ record to 0-7 at the biggest show of the year. While Banks has continuously put on great matches on this stage, she has not been able to close the deal with the win just yet. The biggest travesty out of all of her WrestleMania matches was five years ago at WrestleMania 32 where Banks made her debut and was clearly the hottest superstar in the triple threat match against Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair, judging by the loud cheers she got when she made her entrance. However, WWE booked Flair to win the (at the time) new women’s championship, which in retrospect they probably should have avoided considering Flair had held the previous iteration of the belt in the Diva’s Championship since Night of Champions in 2015.
Since Banks debuted in 2015, stars such as Nia Jax, Naomi -- who has not been used in nearly four years--, Alexa Bliss, Nikki Cross, the IIconics and Carmella have all gotten wins at WrestleMania before Banks. None of these wrestlers carry the same cache that Banks has. Outside of Carmella, the rest of these wrestlers have won championships at WrestleMania, yet a woman who was recently voted as a top-six women’s wrestler in the companies’ history has not gotten one yet.
If we look at her peers that Banks is most commonly associated with, The Four Horsewomen of WWE (Banks, Flair, Bayley and Becky Lynch, she is the only one who has not won a match at WrestleMania yet. In fact, every other member of the group has at least two wins, with Flair having the most with three and yet one could easily argue that Banks is the best of the group.
If Banks does not get that elusive win within the next year or two, she may never get one for her career. If WWE continues to move forward with new stars such as Belair and Rhea Ripley instead of relying on the previous generation like they have a bad habit of doing, then the timing for Banks may not be good ever again. Especially since WWE does not seem to like to put women on the card if they are not wrestling for one of the women’s championships. Banks has done almost everything there is to be done in the business, but one of the biggest moments a superstar can have in their careers continues to elude her.
