Sasha Banks Update: Money In The Bank, Continued Frustrations

Sasha Banks and WWE remain at an impasse nearly one month after she and Bayley dropped the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships at WrestleMania 35.

Banks has reportedly shown no signs of interest in returning to action in recent weeks. According to this week's Wrestling Observer Newsletter, WWE had wanted Banks to be involved in the women's Money In The Bank ladder match in two weeks at the PPV of the same name. However, with Banks still non-committal on a return, they chose to replace her with Dana Brooke.

The women's ladder match is now set to feature Natalya, Alexa Bliss, Naomi, Mandy Rose, Bayley, Carmella, Brooke, and Ember Moon. The winner will win the women's Money In The Bank briefcase with a guaranteed shot at one of the company's WWE Women's Championships.

Bank's creative frustrations came to a head with WWE's decision at WrestleMania to take the women's tag team championships off of Bayley and herself. The team had been under the impression that they would receive a long title run to legitimize the titles. Instead, they ended up holding the belts for less than two months, with the run ending in the loss to the IIconics at WrestleMania.

It's been made clear that Banks and Bayley have no problems personally with The IIconics, the frustration came from the booking decision to end their title reign so early. While the team would have been happy to lose the championships to the IIconics at some point, they firmly believed that WrestleMania was not the time to do so.

Banks has reportedly asked for a release from her WWE contract, but it's not expected that WWE will grant the request. The company does not want to let any stars under contract go that could help out the upstart All Elite Wrestling and Banks would certainly do just that.

It seems like right now, Banks is content sitting out the remainder of her contract at home unless major changes are made with her character's direciton. However, that brings about another problem in that WWE could add time to her contract due to her not working dates for the promotion while she is away. This is similar to what happened with Neville for several months until he and WWE eventually did come to terms on a release.

For the time being, it looks like it will be some time until we see Sasha Banks on WWE television. She would clearly like to see a long term vision for her character presented that she feels is up to par. In looking at her time spent on the main roster since being brought up from NXT back in 2015, one can understand some of the frustration she has felt. All of her women's championship title reigns have been cut incredibly short, with the tag team championship reign just the latest example, and she has been entirely absent from the title picture for a good amount of her run.

Despite all of this, WWE wants her back in the fold and had her penciled in for Money In the Bank until recently. She is no longer part of those plans, so we will have to wait and see what the summer brings for Banks and WWE.

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