Sasha Banks Details Her Struggle With Depression In 2019, Asking To Leave WWE

Sasha Banks sheds light on her four-month absence from WWE following WrestleMania 35.

Speaking on Steve Austin’s Broken Skull Sessions, The Boss opened up about a particularly difficult period of time where she was battling depression. Banks said she felt as though she was losing herself, knowing only her character and WWE for so long. When she and Bayley won the Tag Team Championship at Elimination Chamber 2019, things were progressively getting worse, but knowing how important that match was to Bayley, with whom she fought so hard to bring the titles into existence, Sasha continued working.

“Depression was taking over, my mind was taking over, my thoughts were taking over. This place was being bigger than me. I really, really lost myself because, for a good seven years, I didn’t even hear my real name. I didn’t hear Mercedes anymore. All I heard was Sasha Banks. Travelling on the road, we only get one to two days off, so I’m home not even seeing what my real hair looks like. All I see is purple hair every single day. There were just so many things that were just — I let it control me, I let it take and be like, this is — this is too much, instead of being like, you know what, everything’s good. Breathe. Everything’s fine.”

Banks recalls looking in the mirror and noticing that she had lost all the light in her eyes. She couldn’t even look at herself. Once passionate about nothing other than wrestling, she no longer knew who she was, didn’t like how she felt angry going to work, and overall wasn’t being the person she dreamt of being.

Stone Cold then asked about the time Sasha took off from WWE after dropping the Tag Titles to The Iiconics at WrestleMania 35, to which Banks shares that she asked to leave the company, but Vince McMahon said no.

“I wanted to make sure that I didn’t lose myself, so I said you know what, I got to take a step away and find myself again and I got to be brave about that. That was probably one of the hardest things I had to do, was to ask to leave the WWE. I asked to leave. Vince was like, no [laughs]. He said I’m going to give you 30 days to think about it, and I took more than 30 days.”

During her time away, Banks was able to rediscover herself and her passion, even spending a week in Japan training with Meiko Satomura.

Earlier in the interview, which is now available to watch on the WWE Network, Sasha shared that in 2013 she felt she was on the chopping block.

Banks is the current SmackDown Women’s Champion. She recently teamed up with Bianca Belair at Elimination Chamber 2021, challenging for the Women’s Tag Team Titles.

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