Sasha Banks Beats Bayley, Retains SmackDown Women’s Title on WWE SmackDown

In her first title defense since beating Bayley for the SmackDown Women’s Championship at Hell in a Cell, Sasha Banks defeated her former friend Friday night to retain the title after getting the challenger to tap out to the Bank Statement.

Bayley nearly pulled off the win after hitting Banks with a Backstabber and belly-to-belly suplex combination:

However, Banks was simply too strong at the end of a match, and Bayley took a ton of punishment:

It was Carmella who ultimately got the last laugh, though, as she attacked the champion before she went to the back:

After several months of the two running roughshod over the SmackDown women’s division and even imposing their will on Raw and NXT at times, their relationship exploded in September when Bayley turned on her former teammate.

The Role Model briefly put Banks on the shelf by injuring her neck with a steel chair, but The Boss worked her way back and challenged her rival to a Hell in a Cell match at the same-titled pay-per-view.

After initially refusing to sign the contract, Bayley was forced to do so when Banks attacked her and used a steel chair. Knowing the only way to stop the onslaught was to sign on the dotted line, she put pen to paper.

Banks and Bayley went on to have one of the best matches of the year in WWE at the PPV on Oct. 25 and arguably one of the greatest women’s and Hell in a Cell matches in company history.

While Bayley pushed Banks to the limit, The Boss prevailed by making her opponent tap to the Bank Statement, thus becoming SmackDown women’s champion for the first time and ending The Role Model’s remarkable 380-day reign.

The win made Banks only the third Grand Slam women’s champion in WWE history, joining Bayley and Asuka as the only Superstars to hold the NXT, Raw and SmackDown women’s titles, as well as the WWE Women’s Tag Team titles.

Banks celebrated her win on the following episode of SmackDown, but Bayley interrupted and made every attempt to get inside her former pal’s head. She accurately pointed out The Boss had failed in her first title defense after each of her Raw title wins, which is an albatross she has carried throughout her career.

With Bayley poking and prodding her, Banks agreed to put the SmackDown title on the line at a weekly show rather than waiting for a future pay-per-view.

The Boss exorcised some demons by retaining Friday and cemented her champion vs. champion match against Raw women’s champion Asuka at Survivor Series on Nov. 22, but one can only assume her rivalry with Bayley is far from over.

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