It appears the reports over the last week regarding Banks’ and Naomi walkout having no support backstage isn’t entirely accurate.
When Sasha Banks and Naomi walked out of Monday’s RAW taping it sent shockwaves through the industry. WWE put out an immediate statement, attempting to pit talent against each other. On Friday’s SmackDown, it was announced that the pair had been indefinitely suspended, with the company ceasing to sell merchandise for the two.
Wade Keller of PWTorch provided an audio update regarding the backstage reaction to the pair walking out:
I can say there are people who in that locker room – colleagues of theirs [including] active wrestlers, and otherwise, who are disappointed and not sympathetic to the way Sasha and Naomi handled this. And there are others who, yes, think this is a cool thing that they did. And they sort of wished that they had the guts to do something like that and take a stance. So I mentioned Naomi’s contract is coming due in WWE. And there had been some rumblings that maybe this was related to contract issues and not wanting to look like they were being sacrificed right before to take some leverage away or just spend some of their equity right before their contracts come due. We don’t have details on when her contract expires, just that that could have been a contributing factor in the frustration of Naomi and perhaps Sasha, that, we’re going to take away some of your leverage by having you do pretty high profile jobs in the midst of a tag team title reign that they were excited about.”
“And they felt like that wasn’t being repaid with being protected while they were tag team champions. And like I said, I’ve talked to enough people to get a sense [that] there’s not any sort of unanimity in their opinion, in the locker room of how they handle this. I think there’s some sympathy for certain details of why they walked out but not a lot of sympathy for walking out before a show. But when it gets right down to it, Sasha and Naomi could not have stayed and done that match without making things worse for WWE. If Naomi won the match and earned the title shot and you do that and then Naomi says I don’t want to go through with this, now WWE has more of a mess to clean up than simply announcing the six-pack challenge that WWE needs to rework on short notice…”
Wade Keller of PWTorch
What do you make of this backstage reaction regarding the walkouts? Do you think this could lead to more issues for the WWE regarding talent being unhappy? Let us know in the comments section and on our social media pages.
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for transcription
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