WWE News: Vince McMahon Comparing Sasha Banks To Daniel Bryan Over Injury Concerns

One of the bigger mysteries in WWE since WrestleMania back in April has been the presence, or lack thereof, of Sasha Banks. The Boss was in the division’s biggest feud that culminated in a triple threat match with Charlotte and Becky Lynch in Dallas for the newly-minted WWE Women’s Championship. Charlotte continued as champion and moved on to a feud with Natalya. Becky Lynch parlayed her ‘Mania moment into a program with Emma and Dana Brooke that dissolved after Emma went down with an injury. And then there’s Sasha Banks.

Sasha mostly disappeared from the scene altogether. There was speculation that WWE was just keeping Banks off television in order to keep her away from Charlotte until their eventual showdown, which would likely have happened at SummerSlam. As it turns out, Sasha suffered a significant injury during a May 15 live event in Charlottesville, Virginia. Referee Darrick Moore accidentally kneed her in the head, so hard in fact that it gave Sasha a concussion. The WWE hadn’t confirmed the injury, but she’s since been cleared to return to the ring after passing the company-mandated concussion testing protocol.

That, and the fact that she is back on the live events tour wrestling again on weekends, is the good news. The bad news is, that according to the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter, the injury hasn’t done Sasha any favors when it comes to how Vince McMahon views her. While Vince recognizes the reaction that Sasha Banks gets from the crowd, and her overall appeal, he believes her to be injury prone because of how she operates in the ring.

The concussion injury is one of the flukiest you’ll ever see in a wrestling ring, one that certainly was completely out of Sasha’s control. But Vince is of the belief that Sasha only knows one speed in the ring, and that’s all out. Vince has compared Banks on numerous occasions to Daniel Bryan in that sense. Entertaining workers who put their bodies on the line every single night, throwing caution to the wind for the sake of making their fans feel satisfied. The sentiment is that Bryan’s career ended abruptly because of all the high-risk work he did in the squared circle. And if Sasha continues to operate at breakneck speeds every single night, she might suffer the same fate.

Injuries damaged what should have been the WWE’s biggest card of all time at WrestleMania 32. There were no matches for the likes of John Cena, Sting, Seth Rollins, Cesaro, and Bray Wyatt. Vince admitted that they were forced to “make chicken salad out of chicken s***,” but it wasn’t like they had any other choice. Sasha Banks, Charlotte and Becky Lynch were one of the bigger draws on the show, and they still may have been even if all those injured stars were on the card. But at a time when the company is about to undergo a brand split, it needs all the healthy bodies it can get to fill out two separate rosters.

Aside from Sasha Banks, the women’s division has also seen Emma, Naomi, and Tamina all go down with recent injuries. Initial plans for the division’s secondary feud had Emma and Dana Brooke team up on Becky Lynch until she found a partner to even the odds. That partner was thought to be Sasha Banks. Emma got hurt, and they moved Dana with Charlotte, and now it appears they’re setting up a tag feud featuring Charlotte and Dana against Becky and Natalya. Dana has a ton of backstage support, and may be the SummerSlam back-up plan to face Charlotte if Sasha can’t stay healthy or if Vince doesn’t have enough faith in her.

[Image via WWE]