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The "Sasha Banks is losing her smile" thread


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I don't think she's handling this entire thing well, but I fully understand why she's upset.  She cares about her career and wants to be put in a position to excel.  Every time she gets put into a position to thrive, they pull the rug out from under her and she has to start all over again.  That has to be frustrating.  The IIconics are a fun act, but they are going to be the exact same act with or without the belts.  Sasha and Baley as touring champions would actually mean something for those belts, and they are two people who want the extra workload.  I don't see the point of putting the belts on the IIconics at all.

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I may be reading too much into things, but when Sasha/Bayley lost the tag belts at Mania and Bayley lost cleanly on Raw the next night my first thought was that the shake-up is next week and they are getting split up. I get that they are friends and perhaps wanted a longer run with the belts... but what Sasha clearly seems to want in her career kinda requires her to be a solo act and I'd argue her and Bayley need a break away from each other about as much as Charlotte and Becky do. Basically for Sasha this might have actually been good news depending on how the women rosters shook out.

 

That and most of the time WWE handles tag teams poorly, getting moved away from that is probably a blessing.

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15 hours ago, MORELOCK said:

Can't name a second Tom Magee match, so that lends weight to my opinion that carry jobs don't seem to happen nearly as often as wrestling fans seem to think.

Magee managed to have bad matches with Arn Anderson and Tim Horner.

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1 hour ago, supremebve said:

I don't think she's handling this entire thing well, but I fully understand why she's upset.  She cares about her career and wants to be put in a position to excel.  Every time she gets put into a position to thrive, they pull the rug out from under her and she has to start all over again.  That has to be frustrating.

Herein lies one of the problems I'm having with her. This is a legit, relevant issue that a lot of wrestlers in recent times have run into, but their reactions were different. They didn't become moody and hard to work with. I'm talking about people like Barrett, Cesaro, Ryder, etc.

Edited by The Green Meanie
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Sasha's situation is a mixed bag. She has legitimate gripes, IMO. 5 titles reigns and only 1 successful title defense is inexcusable. To push for women's tag titles and get them, only to lose them before you can live up to the touring champion moniker is rough. She and Bayley should have several great matches where they beat the stuffing out of each other instead of in a holding pattern for the longest. Those are fair concerns.

I also think she's been the victim of sexism and misogynoir, much like Naomi. Notice how they get abused by fans for voicing their opinions, while The Revival were applauded for standing up for themselves.

But at the same time, Sasha may be the most petulant person on the roster. She gets in her feelings whenever she has to lose, and help us all if it's to Alexa. She seems to think she's the standard bearer for women's wrestling and if you don't meet her standards, you're worthless. Working with someone like that has to be tough, even if you like them.

I think something both Sasha and Bayley need to see is that everything and everyone evolves. There's no doubt Vince and Hunter would have favored someone like Charlotte, even if she wasn't Ric Flair's daughter. She's their concept of what makes for a good-looking woman. It's narrow-minded, as we all know. But where I think S & B lose the plot is that they haven't improved as much as they think they have. Someone like Charlotte could coast, but has continually gotten better, both with her in-ring ability and character. I don't think Charlotte should be a 8-time champion at this point. But she's becoming a complete package. Sasha and Bayley haven't.

Sasha and Bayley haven't added any depth to their characters. They still can barely cut a promo. There's no excuse for that at this point. Especially when you get mad at Alexa for supposedly cutting the line and you know her promo skills are why she's been able to do so. They can take speech classes, study acting tapes, all sorts of tools are available to them. Maybe they're doing all that, I don't know. But if they are, it hasn't shown itself in their work.

Sasha is a very talented wrestler and I don't fault her for trying to maintain her value in a business that chews you up at a moment's notice. She does what she can to get a match over, to where she's taking too many risks IMO. I agree her ambition outweighs her athleticism, but that makes her unique. I enjoy her go for broke style, to a point. I wish she'd tone it down a bit, but that wouldn't be her, and I realize that.

I think she ultimately stays in WWE. It's where she'll make the most money and if I recall, she helps provide for her brother, so that's something to keep in mind. But she has to come to terms with a lot being out of her control. It's not fair and she deserves better. But so do a lot of other people in wrestling.

TL; DR: Sasha has legitimate gripes, but she also needs to look within and be honest with herself. Take a breath, calm down, and find a happier approach to her career.

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3 minutes ago, The Green Meanie said:

Herein lies one of the problems I'm having with her. This is a legit, relevant issue that a lot of wrestlers in recent times have run into, but their reactions were different. They didn't become moody and hard to work with. I'm talking about people like Barrett, Cesaro, Ryder, etc.

Hold up...   RYDER hasn't been moody?  This is the example you use?  He's posted several times "from catering" on Twitter complaining about his position and has done so for years. Barrett clearly wasn't happy that they fucked up his Bad News gimmick too.   

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I feel like it's a totally different bag when it comes to complaints from the talent inside of the women's division. Unless a big program is going on, IE anything with Ronda since she debuted, the women only REALLY get a few more minutes than they used to if you really think about it. That, and the workrate has went up from the early 2010s Divas era. But besides that... not much has changed, I'd argue. Yeah, they have their own Rumble and MITB, and they just main evented WrestleMania... but on weekly TV, since it's a division with only a handful of women on each show, they don't get that much time to shine compared to everyone else. Fuck, their cruiserweight division gets an entire hour every week devoted to them for whatever reason.

The milestones/accomplishments have gotten bigger for the women, but what their given on a weekly basis and in-ring wise hasn't changed TOO MUCH. In my opinion, anyway.

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7 minutes ago, Niners Fan in CT said:

Hold up...   RYDER hasn't been moody?  This is the example you use?  He's posted several times "from catering" on Twitter complaining about his position and has done so for years. Barrett clearly wasn't happy that they fucked up his Bad News gimmick too.   

I don't read Twitter and have no interest in doing so, so anything that's said there I don't know about unless someone posts here. If he has, I'll stand corrected.

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18 minutes ago, Burgundy LaRue said:

I think the difference is Sasha will seemingly go after fellow wrestlers when she's upset. Look at Naomi's recent squabble. She was clearly upset, with good reason, but she didn't take a swipe at any of the other talent. Sasha has notably done that with Alexa, and it's petty.

CM Punk did that to The Miz and nobody called him a petulant child on here.  Some have said he's a dick and a bit of a mark for himself but the comments weren't overboard like they are for Sasha. 

Punk's was worse because at least Sasha and Alexa have legitimate heat dating back years.  Punk did it with The Miz (who actually seems like a good guy) for no other reason than "oh, The Miz is worthless.."  

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Alexa Bliss seems like a nice woman, so I'm not sure what your point is here Niners. Whose to say Miz & Punk didn't have heat for years too? The only common thread in those two examples you just brought up are how similar CM Punk and Sasha Banks are, and the two people they had a meltdown over seem like decent-to-good people outside of wrestling. Well, and the other common link is that Bliss & Miz weren't indie wrestlers before WWE and get pushes more consistently, but...

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Punk had a self-agrandizing sense of self. He wasShane Douglas without people there to tell him "Dude, y'know we are in this mess together right?"

Sasha's deal is she is talented and knows seems to have no direction with her character or place on the roster. She was betteras heel and she knows it, thusanother thing to frustrate her being aa pandering face. Her frustration is valid, she jusrt needs to deal with it better

James

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3 minutes ago, Casey said:

Alexa Bliss seems like a nice woman, so I'm not sure what your point is here Niners. Whose to say Miz & Punk didn't have heat for years too? The only common thread in those two examples you just brought up are how similar CM Punk and Sasha Banks are, and the two people they had a meltdown over seem like decent-to-good people outside of wrestling. Well, and the other common link is that Bliss & Miz weren't indie wrestlers before WWE and get pushes more consistently, but...

I'm not saying Alexa isn't a nice woman,  I was pointing out how Punk went after a who is seemingly a real solid dude.  Maybe they did have heat,  I don't know.  But we know for sure that Sasha and Alexa have disliked each other for years.

To that point,  I don't think Sasha is going after Alexa or vice versa over in-ring workrate or whatever..  I'm sure Sasha feels she is better in the ring but she didn't go after The IIconics, she congratulated them..  

So I think it's more contained to Sasha and Alexa not liking each other than Sasha going after "other talent".  The only person she's gone after is Alexa unless I missed something.  The Charlotte thing is weird because they are friends,  they train together to this day,  but Charlotte in her own words said that Sasha is better and management felt Sasha didn't need a title whereas she did..  I'm not sure either need or don't need a title,  I'm just saying what Charlotte said about how management first handled them when they came up. 

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Sasha might not have went after Alexa Bliss over her in-ring talent, but she's went after her at a few points in time for not being a fan of wrestling all of her life. Which is just as dumb, to me. Which is probably the root of their problem, if you think about it. The IIconics were fans all of their lives, paid their dues in the indies, etc. Alexa Bliss got invited to a tryout and is pushed to the moon now. Kind of easy to see what's going on between the two.

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2 minutes ago, Casey said:

Sasha might not have went after Alexa Bliss over her in-ring talent, but she's went after her at a few points in time for not being a fan of wrestling all of her life. Which is just as dumb, to me. Which is probably the root of their problem, if you think about it. The IIconics were fans all of their lives, paid their dues in the indies, etc. Alexa Bliss got invited to a tryout and is pushed to the moon now. Kind of easy to see what's going on between the two.

Still remember the post Great Balls of Fire 2017 show with Sasha Banks going on Alexa Bliss. There was a recent interview with Banks saying she didn't want to work with Bliss again. Banks vs. Bliss is on RAW next week, right?

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7 minutes ago, Casey said:

Sasha might not have went after Alexa Bliss over her in-ring talent, but she's went after her at a few points in time for not being a fan of wrestling all of her life. Which is just as dumb, to me. Which is probably the root of their problem, if you think about it. The IIconics were fans all of their lives, paid their dues in the indies, etc. Alexa Bliss got invited to a tryout and is pushed to the moon now. Kind of easy to see what's going on between the two.

First,  I want to say I think Punk was wrong for what he did but I understood his frustration just like I understand Sasha's too.  

But to your point about Alexa not being a fan of wrestling,  this was what Sasha said on RAW Talk.  But she said the problem wasn't that Alexa was not a fan,  she said the problem is that Alexa was pretending to be a fan and being fake about it and then she couldn't tell the difference between Matt and Jeff.  She said Alexa should just "be herself".  

She said that the other women do not need to be fans of wrestling but they should respect wrestling.  I think there's a big difference there between what you gathered from the interview and what was actually said. 

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I feel like knowing who the Hardys are and "respecting the business" are two different things and Sasha is just super salty that this non-fan came into a business she loves and got everything that Sasha wanted for herself.

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