10 Wrestlers Who Reward You For Paying Attention
4. Sasha Banks & Bayley
The Sasha Banks Vs. Bayley storyline is as much an indictment of WWE as it is celebration of the creative process.
Road Dogg's infamous quote from his After The Bell podcast appearance - they "don't trust" certain talents to cut promos "yet" - stifles the company as much as those contracted to make them money. Sasha Banks and Bayley were always fantastic and meticulous storytellers. They crafted a modern masterclass of a programme throughout 2015. But they were only permitted to put together something uniquely their own years into their main roster runs. By the time Banks and Bayley had earned that "trust", WWE had eroded the trust of the audience.
Their 2020 feud is an outlier, but through this cynical, numbed lens, it's almost more impressive that it happened. It revealed itself very subtly; with every glance cast towards Bayley's title, it became clear that this relationship wasn't quite as symbiotic as the champion would like. There was a glorious symmetry to the physical work that conveyed just how closely they were matched, and just how close Banks was to capturing the title.
They folded the crux of their first programme into the second with the poetry of a proverb - Don't bite the hand that feeds - in the fantastic culmination of something WWE, being WWE, waited far too long to execute.