https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhIxDF_NyVo
Are you a Sasha Banks fan? Well, if you somehow aren’t yet, I highly suggest you check out her recent appearance on Talk Is Jericho. Sasha comes across as incredibly likable and totally unafraid to go against the usual WWE grain in the interview. You can check out the full thing above, but, if you don’t have 80 minutes to spare, here are a few highlights.
Sasha had a lot of interesting things to say about WWE developmental. In particular, she described the atmosphere that discouraged women from “wrestling like men,” which she worked hard to dispel.
“When we first started [in NXT], they told us to wrestle like Divas, and what exactly is that? We didn’t know. Be girly, do hair pulling, do cat fights, and we’re just like, ‘That’s not what we wanted.’ So, we kept striving, and putting on these matches and made them pay attention to us.”
Thankfully, with the help of new Sara Del Rey and some other trainers, things began to change…
“They didn’t want us to work like guys. No punches, no kicks, no striking, no foreams, just pull hair and do the stuff, and we’re just, ‘What is this?’ Then, Sara Del Rey came in and was like, ‘What do you mean? What is this Diva style you’re talking about?’ She was not for it, and she trained us like the guys. Not just Sara, I’ve learned from Joey Mercury and the best, Norman Smiley. I have to give him so much credit. I would not be the competitor I am today if it wasn’t for him.”
Speaking of “wrestling like a Diva,” Sasha was surprisingly candid about the fact that she didn’t enjoy WWE women’s wrestling and instead looked up to male wrestlers like Eddie Guerrero.
“I’ve always wanted to wrestle like the guys, but I never had woman figure in the WWE. The time I was watching, it was all bra and panties matches, you had to be on the cover of Playboy to get a storyline, and it was so frustrating for me to watch that, when this is what I want to do when I grow up. But I always watch guys like Eddie Guerrero and you [Chris Jericho] and Rey Mysterio and Dean Malenko, and I always wanted to be like that. My No. 1 was Eddie Guerrero. I don’t know what made me connect to him so much. He was the first match that I saw that hooked me on wrestling. Everything about him I just love. I want to be the female Eddie Guerrero.”
While on the subject of Eddie, Sasha had a story about him, and, I warn you, this will break your heart into a million little pieces.
“I was at the show after Eddie had passed away. So, my favorite wrestler of all-time, and I’m at that show. The day before, I had won tickets, and I thought it was a sign. I get to meet Eddie Guerrero, and I get to see him, and he had passed away. I hadn’t turned on a radio or TV or nothing, and I made my little sign that said ‘I Love Eddie Guerrero’ and I went to the arena and saw all these signs that said ‘R.I.P. Eddie’ and ‘We’ll Miss You, Eddie’ and I just thought in my head, ‘Oh my God, everybody in Minnesota must hate Eddie,’ because I thought in my head he must be wrestling The Undertaker or something. Then, a fan came up to me, and he said, ‘You know Eddie’s dead, right?’ and I’m like, ‘No?’ It felt like a hammer hit my heart. I just died inside.”
Noooooo. No, no, no. Poor Sasha. Let’s move onto a happier story about how Sasha created THE BOSS.
“I started with NXT, no character, just myself. I was just getting frustrated that the fans just didn’t connect to me at the time. I talked to Tyler Breeze, who’s been there for a long time, and he really helped me. He told me to get a list of characters, have a background story, just figure out what fits you the most, and the first thing I had was The Boss because my cousin is Snoop Dogg, and he calls himself The Boss. This works. I could just call him for one-liners and all that stuff. It just kept getting bigger and bigger.”
And I have a feeling it’s just going to keep getting bigger from here. I just scratched the surface of what Sasha and Jericho covered in this post, so, again, I highly suggest you listen to the full thing if you have time.
via Talk Is Jericho
