You shouldn’t have made Asuka angry, Sasha. You wouldn’t like her when she’s angry.

Friendship!

When you get down to it, wrestling, in so many ways, is about friendship.

Sure, wrestling friendships are often disposable— we love a good heel turn, after all— but the ones that last, the ones that matter, the ones that transcend barriers of alignment and promotion? Those are magic.

And indeed, Bayley and Sasha Banks, self-proclaimed role models, have that kind of friendship. All manner of strife has threatened to drive a wedge between them, but time and again they patch things up and get right back to helping each other out. It’s a model that kids could actually stand to learn a thing or two from!

The part where they’re willing to do anything to get what they want? Not so much for the kiddos.

Which brings us to Sasha Banks and her quest for a singles title.

Not content to let Bayley Dos Straps have all the fun, the Boss wedged herself into the Raw Women’s Championship scene and got herself a match against Asuka at Extreme Rules. A match that promptly ended in chaos and chicanery even by WWE standards when Bayley took the literal shirt off a referee’s back and called the finish.

That lead Stephanie McMahon to step in and, instead of just overturning the result, she ordered a rematch on Raw with one stipulation— there was to be no champion’s advantage, and if the winner won by countout or disqualification, well so be it, we need to have a champion.

And so the role models set about on an evil plan; in the middle of the rematch, Bayley began a vicious backstage beatdown on Asuka’s tag partner in Kabuki Warriors, Kairi Sane. Given the choice between reclaiming her title and saving her friend, Asuka made the only reasonable decision— she ran out of the match and to Sane’s rescue.

That was the end (for now, at least) of Kairi Sane’s WWE career, but it sparked a whole new fire for vengeance in Asuka’s heart. A SummerSlam rematch was almost inevitable given how WWE operates, but now?

Now it’s personal.

Okay, so that’s the build. Let’s go to the record, as is my wont, and see what we can divine, shall we?

Asuka and Sasha have met only three times in televised singles matches to date— the match on Raw where the Boss won the title by countout, the Extreme Rules match that got thrown out due to Bayley shenanigans, and a match on Raw back in 2018 that Asuka won in a clean and decisive manner with the Asuka Lock.

So the evidence on the ground states it pretty convincingly for my money: this is Asuka’s match to lose. Hold-for-hold, head-to-head, Sasha just can’t stand up to the Empress and her hard-striking, submission-oriented style. Of course, Ms. Banks has a bag full of potential tricks, ranging from subtle cheats all the way up to blatant interference from her role model partner in crime, that can even the scale, so only time will tell.

Can Sasha Banks remain a double champion or will the Empress of Tomorrow reclaim the Raw Women’s Championship?