WWE suspends Sasha Banks and Naomi

WWE simply made issues worse with Sasha Banks and Naomi. A lot worse. What have been the choices thought of by Vince McMahon and discarded? I can’t consider how Friday’s actions on Smackdown! make issues any extra amicable after two of the corporate’s standout performers walked out, because of unhealthy artistic plans, earlier this week.

Each Naomi and Banks have been suspended indefinitely by the corporate and stripped of WWE’s ladies’s tag group titles, the foundation of the duo’s disgust with their artistic course within the first place. All of Banks and Naomi’s merchandise has been pulled from the corporate’s on-line retailer and they’re not marketed for any upcoming reveals via the remainder of the summer season.

It’s made the rounds on social media that Banks and Naomi’s walkout was because of McMahon’s meddling with their storylines. Banks and Naomi have been reunited as a group in February after neither had a singles feud lined up for WrestleMania, they usually did their finest to convey legitimacy to WWE’s floundering ladies’s tag division. It was a troublesome ask, however their title reign led to a number of good matches.

Tone-deaf WWE confirmed lots of the particulars that led to Naomi and Banks strolling out, via an announcement by lead commentator Michael Cole, who appeared extremely uncomfortable with each phrase coming from his mouth, together with the make-up of a six-women tag group match, meant to separate the tag group champs from competing collectively for a number of weeks. It’s a part of the script and never Cole’s personal soliloquy, assuredly with a heavy affect from McMahon himself.

Naomi was reportedly slated to emerge victorious and problem Uncooked champion Bianca Belair on the firm’s subsequent pay-per-view. Banks would’ve allegedly offered the subsequent problem to SmackDown champion Ronda Rousey. Each have been going to lose, which might make the tag champions look weak. An absence of reputable challengers for the ladies’s singles belts shouldn’t impression different champions.

Is Vince bluffing by seeing if they’ll stroll to All Elite Wrestling? Or does McMahon truly not care? He’s an fool if he’s pondering the previous. McMahon is an excellent greater imbecile if the considered the latter has crossed his thoughts. When Toni Storm walked out after internally elevating artistic considerations a number of months in the past, she was quietly launched. She’s now in AEW.

For any WWE fan studying this pondering that is 100% a storyline, it’s fairly clear now that’s not the case. WWE has by no means escalated a storyline on this means. CM Punk’s “walkout” of 2011 preceded by the “pipe bomb” and adopted by a couple of cases of breaking the fourth wall, akin to him calling Triple H “Paul” on-camera, was a shoot turned work with little escaping the partitions of WWE of what was fiction. It was extremely properly finished.

This week has proven how far McMahon, and the yes-men and ladies that encompass him, have fallen. How they’ve packaged the Banks and Naomi scenario has been sloppy and boastful. It makes Naomi and Banks look all the higher for disappearing. They’ve each proper to see how they’ve been handled publicly and digest their true reputations. Just a few under-contract WWE wrestlers have spoken out in help of Banks and Naomi, together with Shayna Baszler, who posted to Instagram with photos of her wrestling the disappearing duo, quoting the sport Warhammer 40,000.

WWE’s response to Naomi and Banks seems to be even worse whenever you see how no reprimands have been handed out final 12 months when Charlotte Aptitude and Becky Lynch’s backstage warmth led to a horribly managed on-screen phase, the place they exchanged titles after switching manufacturers as champions. It made each ladies look infantile by going off script. There was by no means one other point out of it on tv and each went about their enterprise with out even a slap on the wrist.

Cole’s proclamation included saying a match to crown new ladies’s tag group champions. What number of natural ladies’s tag groups does WWE have? A two-team match is only a match. The one logical clarification I can consider for WWE’s technique is to make an instance out of Naomi and Banks as a way to discourage different wrestlers from trying to stroll out themselves. That plan will solely achieve success if Banks and Naomi come crawling again and absolutely admit how improper they have been. And that received’t occur. Ring the alarm bells. WWE has an uncharted talent-relations disaster on its arms. And it’s not going away anytime quickly.