Paige’s wrestling career ended last December after suffering a neck injury during a spot with Sasha Banks at a live event. The feeling at the time was that she may have stepped into the ring too soon. Doctors told her that she would be risking paralysis if she took another bump.
Paige has turned her life around this year and she is now featured every week as the General Manager of Smackdown Live. However, there are still fans that wonder what happened last December. Some of those fans point the blame at Sasha Banks. Paige, during an interview with GiveMeSport, wants to set the record straight and wants the fans to know that Banks did not do anything wrong.
“Nothing was ever Sasha’s fault,” Paige told GiveMeSport. “She got so much backlash and even in the ring, when we were in there, people are chanting ‘Sasha sucks’ and it really upset me to hear that because it wasn’t her fault.”
Paige pointed out that she took the move (the double kick to the back) many times before. She said, “The thing is with me, right, that move where she kicks me in the back, I had taken that so many times previously that I was so stubborn and I thought ‘I can still do these kind of things’ and I thought my neck was just as strong as it was before, but, unfortunately, it’s not.”
Paige continued, “So I called this move and I told her to do it and so she did it, and unfortunately, my neck wasn’t strong enough and it snapped all the way back and it was essentially the same as having a really bad car crash – the whiplash was.”
Paige said that she began to lose feeling in her arms. She tried to continue the match but Banks told her that she needed to stop. “The girls at the side of the ring were crying, Bayley was really upset and Sasha is sitting in the corner just devastated and I couldn’t cry at first; I wasn’t in any pain I was just in so much shock and I’m just looking at these girls like ‘oh my gosh’. And I knew it, I felt it – my career was done,” Paige said.
Paige said that Banks was there with her backstage while Jamie Noble and the trainers checked on her. The following day, she was flown out of Orlando to see Dr. Joseph Maroon in Pittsburgh and that is when she was told that she could be paralyzed if she took another bump.
Paige added, “But, I remember just telling Sasha ‘I can’t wrestle anymore’ and she was devastated, she started crying, crying her eyes out. I was like ‘I’m so sorry’, I think it’s just a British thing to apologise! But I was like ‘I’m sorry, it’s not your fault’ and she’s just been so, so supportive. She always texts me like ‘hey, how are you doing, how things going?’ you know, and she’s just always been really great.”
This should put an end to those fans that have attacked Banks on social media in recent months.
