Sasha Banks Says She Can’t Be Complacent In WWE

In an interview with Edge and Christian’s podcast (via Wrestling Inc), Sasha Banks spoke about always pushing herself to be better and work harder, and why she can’t sit still and be complacent in the WWE. Here are highlights:

On working hard: “I never wanted to be second best. I feel like with anything you do in life, you should strive to be number one, you should strive to be the best. I don’t get how people can be here [in WWE] and just sit around and wait for their turn. Do you know what I mean? Like, or be okay with, like, having a match one week and then the next week being off too. I just don’t know how you do that when this job is hard enough as it is. And I feel like you have to work your ass off to get where you want to be and you have to knock down those doors. And if you’re not happy, you have to let them know. Don’t just tell me you’re happy. You have to show me. I have to show them every single week that I’m here to be the best. When I go out every Monday night, I’m stealing the show or I’m having the best match of the night, so that’s what [pushes] me to be better because I just can’t be complacent.”

On what Summer Rae taught her: “At the time, Summer Rae was going up on the main roster and she would come back down [to NXT] for tapings. And just little things of her even telling me when to look at the camera or understanding when the camera guys have their five-finger [countdown] up and you have five seconds. Those little things like that where I just understood the camera work of everything, and wrestling kind of came easier [to] me, and understanding your character. But once you understand your character, you don’t have to think about the moves anymore. You just embody this character where the moves almost become second nature and just everything kind of flows together because you’re kind of thinking, ‘well, my character would do this here’ or ‘my character would sell this way.’ So it wasn’t really until I got into the BFF group and then kind of branched off on my own where it kind of really clicked for me.”

On not breaking character when she won the NXT title: Once I was next in line for the NXT [Women’s] title run, that’s when my character really started to come out, just showing the world, I can say it, but let me show you in the ring that I truly am the best. So that happened and we had this fatal four-way match with myself, Becky [Lynch], [it’s] Bayley, and Charlotte [Flair] and that’s when I won the NXT Women’s title. And, for me, that was such an insane moment because being called up on the road just to do live events, but still down in NXT, so I wasn’t around those girls when they were trying to plan it and think about putting this match together. But I remember winning that match and in the ref’s ear, they’re like, ‘you need to smile! Be happy that you won’ and I was like, ‘no! This is my character! I’m pissed off that you didn’t believe in me!’ I remember I came in the back and I started crying my eyes out that I had just won this title and Triple H was just like, ‘why didn’t you do that out there?’ And I was like, ‘because that’s how I felt.’ I know how I’d feel out there, but when I come back through the curtains, I’m not Sasha Banks anymore. I’m just Mercedes that got to live this dream.”

On playing a heel: “For me, I love being a bad guy. When I first started, it did not feel natural at all. And then, it just kind of clicked. I’ve been a babyface longer than I’ve been a heel so far in my career in WWE. And when I first turned babyface, I thought it was the hardest thing to do. To get people to like you naturally is so hard. And, like, I still feel like I struggle with it to this day. But I love just learning and growing. And I think whatever role they want to give me, I just want to knock it out of the park. But I think being a heel is just so much [more fun] because I like when people boo me. I like pushing those buttons and seeing what I need to do or what can I do to get the whole building to boo me. It’s kind of a crazy feeling.”