Is Sasha Banks This Year’s Sleeper?
Heading into 2019, we are now officially on the road to WrestleMania. For the time being, we are on the road to the WWE Royal Rumble. We’re anxiously waiting to see who will be the next Rumble winner to punch in their golden ticket to Mania, particularly in the case of the Women’s Rumble.
Most are predicting SmackDown’s Becky Lynch to win the WWE Royal Rumble and challenge Ronda Rousey for her Raw Women’s Championship in long anticipated match-up. That very well could happen. However, ever since the build to Survivor Series earlier this year, the Lynch/Rousey rivalry carries enough steam to vindicate a Mania match without Lynch needing the Rumble to validate the match into existence.
Therefore, without any of us expecting it, WWE could give us a Royal Rumble winner that will go for the SmackDown Women’s Championship while Lynch preys on Rousey’s Raw Women’s Championship. If that is the case, who could possibly win the 2019 Royal Rumble match?
Few – if any – are expecting Sasha Banks to win the upcoming Royal Rumble match. Not just because they think Becky Lynch is primed for the winner’s spot, but because most of us see a future where Banks shares her WrestleMania 35 moment with Bayley to win the inaugural Women’s Tag Team Championship. Banks is one of the last people who anyone is expecting to win the Rumble. Which makes her a perfect candidate to win the Rumble.
WWE loves to throw a curveball at us every once in a while and if they’re gonna go with a good curveball, it might as well be the most slept on female wrestler on WWE’s roster this year.
In 2018, Banks often gave us some of the best performances from any WWE Superstar on the main roster. Whether it be her nearly hour long Rumble 2018 performance, her stint in the Elimination Chamber, or even her tag team matches as a member of the Boss’n’Hug Connection, Banks was consistently impressive.
Yet, for most of 2018, Banks has been absent from the women’s main event picture. Her last Raw Women’s Title match was in that aforementioned Elimination Chamber match, which was in February. As much as we’ve loved seeing Banks tag along with Bayley, a woman of The Boss’s ability belongs in the main event.
A Royal Rumble win and a subsequent title shot at WrestleMania 35 would serve as the perfect shot in the arm that Banks needs to catapult her back into the headlining scene. Not to mention, if Banks does win the Rumble and challenge for the SmackDown Women’s Championship, let’s not forget who she could be facing at the Showcase of the Immortals.
Let’s not forget that the day after Asuka won the Royal Rumble 2018, she had an early Match of the Year candidate against Sasha Banks. In all honesty, one can argue that Asuka vs Sasha Banks was the 2018 match of the year. If not, then at least Raw’s best match of 2018.
If they could pull that off on a Raw stage, they deserve to recapture that magic on the Grandest Stage of Them All. Assuming that Asuka holds her SmackDown Women’s Championship all the way until Mania, of course.
With Ronda Rousey and Becky Lynch bound to put on a clinic to headline Mania, the SmackDown Women’s Championship deserves a contest to rival Raw’s title match. Asuka vs. Sasha Banks could very well be that match.