Sasha Banks hasn't been missing in action since May of 2022, when the then-WWE tag team champion walked out of an episode of RAW alongside her partner, Naomi.
Now granted, Mercedes Varnado has been around, taking pictures with fans from multiple feet away at C2E2, showing up at the She-Hulk premiere, and taking part in very interesting dance routines alongside her once and current tag team partner, who is going by her real name, Trinity Fatu, but “Sasha Banks” has been noticeably absent throughout this process.
But why? Is Varnado attempting to get away from the character that made her a household name? Is she attempting to become a serious actor after a run on The Mandalorian that was initially spurred on by Jon Favreau watching her appearance on Hot Ones?
Neither. No, Varnado isn't capitalizing, let alone monetizing, on the name “Sasha Banks” because she doesn't have the rights to it.
That's right, as you may or may not know, WWE owns the vast majority of their performers' in-ring names and some of their catchphrases too, which is why when a performer like, say, Daniel Bryan jumps ship to AEW, he has to revert to his real name, Bryan Danielson. While occasionally, a performer will be able to keep the character they forged on their own, think Austin Theory or Matt Riddle, WWE will oftentimes attempt to find ways to IP-ize their runs too, from crafting tag teams like RKBro to removing their first names in a very Vince McMahon move that Paul “Triple H” Levesque has started to roll back.
Could Banks soon be back in her old name? All signs appear to be pointing in that direction, with Dave Meltzer reporting that “it’s kind of up in the air. I mean, they’re gone. The last I heard was that there would be attempts to be made to reconcile, especially with Vince (McMahon) gone. So, it’s up in the air. I don’t think there’s anything definite just yet,” back in August, but even if that comes to pass, the performer has now seen how quickly all of her hard work can be taken away and how important it is to own your own character.
Sasha Banks is looking to establish herself outside of WWE.
After largely avoiding expansive talks about her absence from WWE, Varnado made her way onto Ahch-To Radio, a Star Wars podcast, to talk about her time in George Lucas' universe, her time away from the ring, and the concept of creating your own intellectual property outside of an established company, as transcribed by Fightful:
You always want to create characters to portray and live by. You're [host] a character right now. I'm sure once you get off your headsets, you're someone completely different. We're always portraying different characters in every different moment of our time. For me, it's really just owning my own IP [Intellectual Property] and owning the character behind the character and really defining, who is the character that is playing the character. It's really just finding yourself. When it comes to even wrestling, that's a character that I come up with and I portray myself and you have your writers coming in and giving a little more details of what they see for it. It's really when it comes to characters in your life, it's what you see for that character because only you know how you're going to play it and only you know how you see the vision of that character.
Wow, props to Ahch-To Radio for that one; Varnado delivered some surprisingly insightful stuff on a show typically dedicated to discussing topics like Kylo Ren and R2D2. Everyone, from WWE Superstars to podcast hosts, is putting on a character to some degree even when they are using their real names, and being conscious of that fact can really unlock the potential of such an opportunity. After committing a decade of work into building up the “Sasha Banks” character for WWE without any real way to capitalize off of that effort once her time in The Fed is done – save maybe signings at conventions – Varnado now understands that building up her own name, or another name she owns, is crucial to her long-term success both personal and financial.
Will the day eventually come when little kids ask their parents to buy them Mercedes Varnado shirts? Will she be able to parlay the next act of her career, be that in WWE or as an actor, into the sort of name recognition Sasha Banks currently has? Only time will tell, but it's clear that's the goal.
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