10 Things You Didn't Know About Sasha Banks
4. Only Became Comfortable As A Heel Upon Joining WWE
As aforementioned, before she signed on to work in WWE, Sasha Banks - as either Mercedes KV or Miss. Mercedes - was often found on the independent scene working as a smiling, happy-go-lucky babyface. There were very few opportunities for her to learn how to be an effective heel, at least not until she started in NXT.
It was there that the now-deceased 'American Dream' Dusty Rhodes could see something burning just underneath the surface in the young woman, encouraging her to let that come out during promos. Amazingly, Banks was unsure about becoming a villain, because she didn't want to offed people with her words, which is ironic to think now, because she seems so comfortable in the character.
It's been said that WWE's creative team are instructed to make characters and gimmicks for the Divas as simple as possible for people to grasp, which is probably why the only heel character the writers seem to have in mind for women is being bitchy egotists. That's a perfect summary of Sasha Banks on NXT programming, but she does it so well that it's crazy to think she'd never really been heel prior to WWE.