10 Most Shocking Revelations From WWE In 2020
4. Long Term Storytelling Is Still Alive...
...just. And even then, the company will try and kill it repeatedly.
Bayley and Sasha Banks' mini-programme with Asuka across the summer was a bit of a mess, undermining great matches with horrendous finishes until SummerSlam made scattered parts whole and course corrected an angle that has been strong for most of the year.
It was during the latter stages of Bayley's SmackDown Women's Championship feud with Lacey Evans in January that her best friend appeared to start asking herself silent questions about what exactly she was doing by the 'Role Model's side. The two were hardly on a collision course before WrestleMania, but a lack of competition beyond 'The Boss' herself on SmackDown resulted in a multi-woman match shaped around teases of their eventual split.
From there it was side-swipes and stolen glares every week. Banks went from eyeballing the one title she'd never won to actively wearing it her waist when she was in Bayley's corner. A Tag Team Championship victory proved to be vital vindication for the former 'Hugger' as did an ill-gotten Raw Women's Championship for Sasha before their world came crumbling down over two Sundays at SummerSlam and Payback.
To set up the actual match between them at Hell In A Cell, Bayley assaulted Banks, eventually admitting she was aware all along of her former friend's intentions. The payoff (and, sigh a bit, the rematch) was sensational, drawing from five years of history between the two as well as their recent issues.
All of this was the best thing in WWE by the sort of distance the company should be terrified about. Both wrestlers knew themselves well enough to get any old material over, and the matches banged because that was the point of assembling this mammoth roster in the first place.