Latest Update on Sasha Banks' Return to WWE TV

Sasha Banks hasn't appeared on WWE television since she and Bianca Belair signed the contract for their SmackDown Women's Championship match at SummerSlam. But that match never actually happened as Banks was pulled from the card due to undisclosed reasons moments before the match was set to begin. There have been a few reports regarding just how long WWE knew "The Boss" wasn't going to be able to compete, and the decision to have Becky Lynch make her surprise return and squash Belair in mere seconds as a replacement was met with hefty criticism.

However, there does seem to be some good news on the Banks front. PWInsider's Mike Johnson reported on Monday that the former champ is expected to be back in time for the second week of September and WWE's return to Madison Square Garden on Sept. 10.

"Nothing is 100% until it happens, but that is the current expectation internally," Johnson wrote.

The Mandalorian star still hasn't wrestled a televised match since WrestleMania 37 back in April. She dropped the SmackDown Women's Championship to Belair in the main event of the show's first night, then was kept off TV until the build towards SummerSlam began.

"It was, that whole month was such an exciting thing for me," Banks said on the Just Women's Sports podcast while describing the significance of her first match with Belair. "We had no idea who was going to main event WrestleMania. The year before I was telling my best friend, Bayley, like 'I'm going to main event WrestleMania 37.' It was always my dream to main event a WrestleMania. So I was just putting it out there in the universe and really just striving and working towards it. So the month before WrestleMania, I really thought, I heard rumblings that it was going to be the guys. And I was like 'okay, what can I do? What can I do? What can I do? All I can do is be me and just keep doing my work as best I can and show Vince that if I'm not the main event, I don't know what main event you're going to have.'

"It was legit the Wednesday before WrestleMania I found out that we were the main event," she continued. "And I was again so nervous because I was asking around 'did you get the card? Did anyone tell you?' And they're like 'you're not the main event.' And I'm like 'nobody told me that!' I'm like 'okay, I still have time because Vince hasn't said anything. I'm going to go to rehearsals and if I find out, all I can do is maybe ask Vince and that's all I can do.' I went to rehearsals and TJ Wilson, who's our producer, he told me that I was the main event. And I just instantly started crying and was just like 'wow. No way!' Like I knew it, it's something that I wanted. Just to finally to hear the words that 'you're the main event.' It was so overwhelming, it's bringing back tears. It's crazy, it's crazy, because it's the biggest thing you can ever do in wrestling. My heroes haven't gotten to do what I've done. So not only that, and just being a woman and being an African American woman. We're checking off so many things. But the biggest thing that I got to check off was my biggest dream in my heart. Fully accomplishing that last checkmark on my list of everything I had written down since I was a kid. That was just last month and I am on vacation right now still soaking that in. I'm just ready for what's next."