At WrestleMania 35, Ronda Rousey, Becky Lynch and Charlotte Flair made history when they became the first women to main event WrestleMania. A few years later the women’s division main evented WrestleMania once again when Bianca Belair defeated Sasha Banks to become the new SmackDown Women’s Champion in the night 1 main event of WrestleMania 37. While Sasha and Bianca received rave reviews for their performance on the Grandest Stage of Them All, it seems that the singles match could have ended up a triple threat.
During a recent interview with Rewind Recap Relive, Sidney Akeem (formerly known as Reggie in WWE) claimed that at one point Vince McMahon wanted to add him to the Sasha Banks vs. Bianca Belair match at WrestleMania 37 to make it a triple threat.
“I almost main evented WrestleMania. It was an intergender match. If I would have been in this match, I’d have got so much heat from everyone because this was a huge match. Vince wanted a Triple Threat between Sasha, Bianca and myself.
I was with Carmella, and Carmella was feuding with Sasha, then Bianca came into the picture. Vince was saying something like, ‘Hey, so I want you to play the room. You are in love with Sasha, so you’re gonna buy her a puppy, and she’s gonna love the puppy.’ And this is basically me getting away from Carmella because Sasha had beaten Carmella so many times and I just got enamored with Sasha. So Carmella fired me and I was supposed to fall in love with Sasha, all of these different things.
Vince calls all of us into the office. Me, Sasha and Bianca, and have some producers and writers there. He says, ‘This is what I’m thinking. Reggie, you buy her a dog, she loves you, and you’re playing in the middle, but the thing is you have an endgame. You will come out and announce that this is no longer a singles. This is a Triple Threat.’
When he said that, Sasha had a look on her face, and Bianca had the same look on her face, and I’m just like, ‘I don’t know what the hell is happening. I’m not gonna look at anyone or say anything.’ Vince said, ‘Because Sasha and Reginald, you guys have great chemistry.’ And Sasha kept asking Vince, ‘What do you mean? What is this chemistry?’ He’s like, ‘I don’t know. It’s just chemistry.’ She’s like, ‘But what makes us have this chemistry?’ He was like, ‘I don’t know, dammit! It’s chemistry!’ We just didn’t get an answer. It was just, ‘Chemistry.’
Lo and behold, they came to their senses. That would have been stupid to throw me in that match, and they went on to have a great match that’s gonna live in WWE history for a long time.”