Mercedes Varnado
Mercedes Justine Kaestner-Varnado is an American professional wrestler currently signed to WWE as a member of the SmackDown brand under the ring name Sasha Banks, where she is one half of the WWE Women's Tag Team Champions with Naomi in their first reign as a team and Banks' record-tying third reign overall. Banks previously wrestled on the independent circuit, most notably for Chaotic Wrestling, where she won the Chaotic Wrestling Women's Championship. She signed with WWE in 2012 and was assigned to the NXT brand. She was promoted to WWE's main roster in 2015. Her match against Bayley at NXT TakeOver: Respect in October 2015 was the first women's match to ever headline a NXT TakeOver, the first iron woman match in WWE history, and the longest women's match in WWE history at the time with a length of 30 minutes. Their match was voted by Pro Wrestling Illustrated (PWI) as Match of the Year, with Banks also being voted as Woman of the Year. Banks went on to hold the Raw Women's Championship five times. In 2016, she and Charlotte Flair became the first women to headline a WWE pay-per-view event, the first women to compete in a Hell in a Cell match, and the first women to win the PWI award for Feud of the Year. In 2019, she won the inaugural WWE Women's Tag Team Championship with her former tag team partner, Bayley, at the Elimination Chamber pay-per-view. In 2020, she won the SmackDown Women's Championship at the Hell in a Cell pay-per-view, thus becoming the third-ever WWE Women's Grand Slam Champion and the fourth WWE Women's Triple Crown Winner. That year, she was named Wrestler of the Year by Sports Illustrated. At WrestleMania 37, Banks and opponent Bianca Belair became the first Black women to jointly headline a WrestleMania. She was the third most tweeted about female athlete in 2021.
