Sasha Banks Explains Which Classic WWE Rivalry Inspired Her Feud With Bayley

The long-awaited feud between Sasha Banks and Bayley finally culminated on WWE television earlier this year. After years of teasing a split and reigniting their rivalry from NXT in 2015, the pair broke apart following Bayley's betrayal when the two failed to reclaim the WWE Women's Tag Team Championships. Banks then beat Bayley for the SmackDown Women's Championship at Hell in a Cell, ending the "Role Model's" year-long reign as champion. In a new interview with Stephanie Chase, Banks revealed that she and Bayley took inspiration from the Trish Stratus vs. Mickie James feud of the mid-2000s for their storyline.

"For me, I got really inspired from Trish Stratus and Mickie James. They had a year-long storyline, and when I was watching as a teenager, that's what I wanted growing up. I wanted a year-long story where you just were on the ride for the whole time. You were never going to get off this roller coaster," Banks said (h/t Wrestling Inc.) "For us, it's kind of almost a revamp of that, besides me and Charlotte as well. It's really cool to see just the investment and time WWE has given to not only myself and Bayley, but within all the women in WWE. Just every single week from Friday Night SmackDown, to NXT, to Monday Night RAW, it's been nonstop of this incredible momentum of women just taking over the company."

In a separate interview with WWE's The Bump last week, The Mandalorian star listed all of the things she wants to accomplish outside of WWE.

"There's gonna be so many things. [I wanna do] a movie, a Victoria's Secret model, Sports Illustrated, my album, a bunch of music videos," Banks said. "I just want to keep on creating and I want to have a wrestling business healing academy. For some reason, I keep seeing something like that when I dream. I want to keep on helping future women in wrestling really succeed in this business. Because It's hard, but I've got your back. I want to keep helping and inspiring because we are going to keep on killing this game. So why not?"