Now Is The Time For Sasha Banks To Turn On Bayley
Sasha Banks’ “I love you” to Bayley was Raw’s most heartwarming moment of the week, which is exactly why now is the perfect time for The Boss to put the nail in the coffin for their friendship.
WWE has spent the last six months or so building up the tension between Sasha and Bayley. The slow burn has ranged from intriguing to downright frustrating depending on the week as WWE has appeared unwilling to pull the trigger and give the fans the first proper Sasha/Bayley feud in three years.
Sasha has willingly taken advantage of Bayley on multiple occasions, displaying her willingless to jeopardize friendship for glory. Multiple arguments and brawls took place in the following months without a true breaking point to lead to a big pay-per-view match.
That breaking point—which is what it seemed like at the time—came a few weeks ago when Bayley brutally assaulted Sasha Banks following a six-woman tag team loss to The Riott Squad.
Rather than start building towards what would’ve certainly been an emotional Extreme Rules match, Bayley and Sasha were scheduled for therapy sessions.
On the latest edition of Raw, the former friends—at the risk of one of them being traded to SmackDown if they couldn’t co-exist—were forced to team against Dana Brooke and Alicia Fox. The match resulted in a double count-out after Sasha Banks came to Bayley’s aid and unleashed a fiery attack on their opponents. When confronted, Sasha Banks confessed her love for Bayley.
With the history between Sasha and Bayley taken into account, there’s multiple paths that could be taken from here. WWE could use the friends’ reformed bond as a building block to introducing the much rumored WWE Women’s Tag Team Titles with Bayley and Sasha as the first champions. However, WWE arguably won’t have the depth to stack the women’s tag team division until after the second Mae Young Classic which leaves one alternative: Sasha Banks fully betrays Bayley.
Sasha Banks’ warm words will bring Bayley’s emotional defense to an all-time low, making her vulnerable for a final betrayal. With Bayley’s attack three weeks ago fresh on The Boss’ mind, Banks can reveal that her love confession was a ruse to sucker Bayley in one last time. Such a move would immediately put her in the conversation for the biggest heel of the company and set up a potential Loser Leaves Raw match at SummerSlam.
A victory for Sasha would earn her even more hatred as she’d be free to spend weeks afterward bragging about sending Bayley packing to SmackDown. A victory for Bayley would give her some long-awaited redemption against her former best friend and add a feel-good moment to the Biggest Party of the Summer. Either way, one of them switching shows is for the best as WWE will have already exhausted all possible story arcs by SummerSlam’s end.
Next: WWE Raw: Results, Highlights, and Grades for July 16, 2018
Bayley and Sasha’s SummerSlam match would be just a few days shy of three years since their classic encounter at the inaugural NXT Takeover: Brooklyn that led to Bayley’s emotional NXT Women’s Championship victory. Sasha turning on Bayley is the best way to draw that emotion again.