Trivia / Sasha Banks

• Approval of God: A Facebook page called Chibi Wrestlers posted artwork of her as a Sailor Scout. She put it on a T-shirt and sent them a picture of her wearing it.
• Ascended Meme: The NXT crowd's "ratchet" chants heckled Sasha for her tacky outfits; she milked them by making her outfits even tackier. She even eventually debuted a T-shirt that said "I'm not ratchet".
• Badass Family: She is related to rapper Snoop Dogg, singers Brandy & Ray J and music producer Daz Dillinger, who confirmed this on his Instagram page.
• Breakup Breakout:
  • Both she and Charlotte are far more successful than their Beautiful Fierce Females stablemate and leader Summer Rae. Sasha and Charlotte have 20 championships (both singles and Tag Team) between them while Summer's time in WWE didn't really amount to anything.
  • Explicitly discussed and lampshaded this when she decided to fly solo from Team BAD. Naomi and Tamina were not amused.
• Creator Backlash: She says she laughs when she thinks of her days as Mercedes KV, feeling she was a bland babyface who had no identity in the ring.
• Creator Breakdown: Sasha's 5-month hiatus after WrestleMania in 2019 was caused by depression and burnout, which she spoke at length about in a WWE Chronicle episode released shortly after her return.
• Executive Meddling: Claimed that in her FCW days, before Sara Del Rey was training the women, she was told off for wrestling too much "like a man", and was frequently told to be more girly.
• Fan Community Nickname: Formerly the Sasha Scouts^note Appropriately coming from a Sailor Moon fangirl, this is a reference to the Sailor Senshi's name in the English dub, the Sailor Scouts, now the Sasha Krew.
• Funny Character, Boring Actor: Inverted. The Boss is a ruthless, humorless Alpha Bitch. As seen on social media, Mercedes the person is much goofier and bubblier. The skits Team BAD did a la The New Day and her backstage interview with Bayley after their tag match at Battleground 2016 are actually closer to her real-life personality.
• God Never Said That: In an interview with Lilian Garcia, she refuted claims that she had ill will towards the women of the Diva Era or the era itself; while she was happy that things had changed by the time she made it to WWE, she still respects the effort of the women themselves. And she was the first to admit that when she was signed, she bought lots of bikinis, because she expected she'd have to do a fair share of swimsuit contests herself.
• Hostility on the Set:
  • She and Charlotte Flair were good friends initially but had a falling out backstage in 2014, which resulted in their partnership quietly dissolving. They apparently patched things up enough to work together repeatedly by the end of the year.
  • She and Alexa Bliss also had a falling out thanks to Sasha breaking Alexa's nose in a late 2014 match and reportedly not apologizing afterwards. Things were tense between the two in the following years until they finally made amends around 2020.
• Lying Creator: She missed TV time around late 2019 to early 2020 and claimed it was due to recording a "rap album". She was actually filming in the second season of The Mandalorian.
• Playing Against Type: Pretty much always played a Face on the indies. However, on NXT she found most of her success as a Heel. She's now back to being a Face on the main roster, and pretty much the top female face in the company at that. She's said that she feels more comfortable as a heel, but likes being a face because of the child fans.
• Promoted Fanboy: Similar to Bayley.
• Real-Life Relative: She got Snoop Dogg (her cousin) to perform her entrance music live at WrestleMania 32, as well as do a verse on a more recent remix of her theme.
• Romance on the Set: Her husband is a wrestler but not employed by WWE in that capacity - he works as a costume designer for them while wrestling on the indies as Mikaze. He is known for appearing on Up, Up, Down, Down.
• Wag the Director: While it's unclear at what degree she was serious or joking about it, she said that the Women's Tag Team titles came about simply because she and Bayley kept "annoying" Vince for months about it until he finally said yes.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Ring Warriors sent out a congratulatory message regarding her NXT contract. Since Mercedes KV had never wrestled for them, it was likely they were setting her up to.
  • When she pitched potential names in FCW, Sasha originally had a different last name, and Banks a different first name. A little while later, she was told she'd be "Sasha Banks".
  • The Boss character first appeared in snippets from a promo class, where Sasha spoke in a ghetto accent and leaned more towards a Sassy Black Woman type.
  • Was supposed to win the IWGP STRONG Women's Championship, but broke her foot during the tournament final, and called an audible to have Willow Nightingale win the match.
• Why Fandom Can't Have Nice Things:
  • She was reluctant to post about or even mention her husband on social media for ages because of the inevitable ridicule he would get from possessive fans.
  • For similar reasons, you rarely see a photo of how she walks around in real life, because she doesn't want over-eager fans to be able to recognise her without her wigs and in normal-looking makeup. Her look in The Mandalorian (hair pulled back, no makeup) is thought to be fairly close, though.
• Writer Revolt:
  • Fed up with how little she was being used, she asked the NXT creative team if she'd ever get a storyline. When told she was "a good hand" and best suited to making the other women look good, she revolted by pitching the Boss character.
  • A much more infamous example in 2022, when Sasha and Naomi got tired of their nonsensical booking^note Reportedly both being fed to their brand's singles champions at a PPV as filler material, after previously being promised a big push in the tag division, threw the Women's Tag Team Championship belts onto John Laurinaitis' desk and legitimately walked out of the company.