10 Times Women's Wrestling SERIOUSLY Kicked Ass
4. Bayley & Sasha Banks Fight Forever
If her erasure from the recent Raw Is XXX celebratory edition of the company’s flagship show is anything to go by, Sasha Banks’ contributions to WWE’s past are about to be heavily underwritten while she’s not part of its present.
This is criminal by itself, but the potential reality that people will simply neglect to mention Banks’ seminal 2015-2020 work alongside and against Bayley is recent wrestling history’s version of cultural vandalism.
From poisoned ‘ranas in sold out arenas to bringing Hell In A Cell back from the dead in an empty room, the real life friends waged wars the likes of which the WWE women’s division may never seen again and - crucially - hadn’t really seen before.
They made history beating the tar out of each other in an Iron Women match in the headline spot of 2015’s TakeOver: Respect, but a transformative and transcendent contest two months prior at TakeOver: Brooklyn wowed a sold out audience, defined a years-long formula, and at long last provider provided proof of concept for the global market leader to catch the f*ck up when it came to the women’s side of the industry.
It took years of bad booking and missed opportunities to get there again on the main roster, but their immense strengths were there when WWE needed them most - Bayley and Banks’ 2020 feud was an unqualified success across the company’s most miserable creative slump.
Amidst destitution, the two assembled six months or so of tense television, the aforementioned titular Premium Live Event classic, and a television rematch that drew SmackDown’s highest number of the year.