8 Match Star Ratings For WWE SummerSlam 2020
3. Asuka Vs. Sasha Banks - RAW Women's Title Match
After a month of hysterically counterproductive bullsh*t grifts, WWE finally recalibrated the Sasha Banks and Bayley story - but what's going on with it, really?
Sasha has to be the babyface, when the split happens, because this isn't some textured narrative that manipulates your emotions and forces you to constantly redirect your sympathy between each player. Bayley is the heel. Overtly. She is incredibly obnoxious, she constantly seeks the easy way out, and she's a negging prick to the woman that is supposed to be her best friend. This was reinforced on the night, aesthetically and narratively, when Bayley refused to be there for Sasha when Sasha was there for Bayley.
Through fire, skill, sympathy, whatever: the wrestling fan needs to root for somebody in a story. Asuka was that somebody here, but we desperately needed to see the Boss within to inform the real story. We've seen it before. That's what made it interesting, what drove it forward.
And yet Sasha here cried for her friend to help her, her friend did not, and she lost clean in the middle. She didn't cut a sympathetic figure; she cut a lamentable one. This should have been corrected with an immediate, violent, vengeful and cathartic post-match sh*t-kicking. It was due. The story demanded it. The reality should have dawned on her, and it did, very slowly, but f*ck that. She didn't administer it because she is dumb and or pitiable. Perhaps this is harsh, and doesn't take it into consideration the profound value Sasha places on the friendship in what is a meta beat brimming with pathos. But she's been looking at that title long enough. She looked delighted with Bayley's plight on Friday.
This is a glaring issue that is all conditional on the follow-up, but, gesturing broadly at everything, nothing can be trusted.
The match itself was very good, because their chemistry is fantastic, but it was a notch below their exceptional standards. Tighter, but diminished through familiarity. The submission work was excellent, the struggle captured very well. It was great wrestling, undermined.
That can be copied and pasted almost everywhere.
Star Rating: ★★★½