WWE SmackDown Women’s Champion Sasha Banks has revealed that she skipped school in order to train to be a professional wrestler.
As a teenager, the real life Mercedes Varnado was educated at home via online lessons but would rarely attend the mandatory teaching in favour of going to professional wrestling lessons to further her dream of becoming one of the greatest female performers in the history of the industry.
Joining Stone Cold Steve Austin for his Broken Skull Sessions, Sasha Banks detailed how she put her training first and skipped online school in order to better her future development:
“I went to online school from 12 to 18. That whole time I went to online school, I went to ‘wrestling school’. I was watching matches, I didn’t go to classes, I didn’t finish my reports. I’m watching every single match that I can from all around the world. So my whole life has just been studying and watching wrestling so that’s why I feel like I’m that good, because I spent all my years studying and perfecting my craft. I didn’t physically go to school. […] I was going on to forums and downloading all these different wrestling shows, just watching all that I could. I was studying [wrestling], this was my ‘it’. I had no plan B. WWE was my only dream, to be a wrestler was my only dream. But at the time I never actually thought I was going to make it to the WWE because I never thought I was pretty enough, or that I looked like the mould that I was seeing on TV for women.”
Playing truant paid off for Banks who not only became one of the legendary figures of NXT during her time with the black and gold brand, but has since risen to the loft heights of Women’s Grand Slam Champion having held the NXT, Raw, SmackDown and Women’s Tag Team Championships.
Currently, Banks is awaiting the decision of 2021 Royal Rumble winner Bianca Belair on who she will challenge at WrestleMania 37.
Credit for the interview: Broken Skull Sessions