The big story coming out of Friday Night SmackDown this week centered around Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch getting into a backstage confrontation following a disaster of a title exchange segment. Lost in the shuffle of all this has been Sasha Banks, who came out after Lynch took off and firmly established herself as the top babyface on the blue brand going forward.
Then, seemingly not long after the aforementioned backstage altercation, Banks was giving an interview for Talking Smack where she got emotional talking about her match at Crown Jewel being a top three moment in her career:
“It didn’t quite go my way. I almost had the win if Becky didn’t cheat and grab that rope, but being in Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh, was something so special. It has to be in the top three moments of my career. To go out there, and I can get emotional, to go out there and to see those fans, to see those kids, to point at them and they’re pointing back at me I’ve never felt something just so impactful and so amazing. To be in the ring with two incredible women who I respect so much, we created so much magic and made history, and gave so much hope to thousands, to millions of people watching at home. It was something that I’m going to remember the rest of my life, and I’m so honored to be there.”
The WWE/Saudi Arabia relationship is still bad (as my colleague Cain outlined here), but that doesn’t mean it isn’t deeply meaningful that there were kids and young girls in Riyadh getting the chance to watch wrestlers like Banks living the dream. Maybe one day they can to.
It all feels so much bigger and more important than petty bickering over who looks bad in a dumb segment.