Triple H Finally Breaks Silence On Naomi & Sasha Banks’ WWE Walkout

Triple H has given his opinion on what happened when Naomi and Sasha Banks walked out of WWE.

There was a huge story in May 2022 when WWE Women’s Tag Team Champions Naomi and Sasha Banks walked out of Raw and didn’t return.

Sasha Banks didn’t return to WWE at all. She ended up going to New Japan Pro Wrestling as Mercedes Mone, then eventually found her way to AEW in early 2024, and she has been there for the past two years.

Naomi stepped away from wrestling for about a year, had a good run in TNA as Trinity, and then returned to WWE in January 2024 in the Women’s Royal Rumble. Naomi had a huge 2025, turning heel, winning Money in the Bank, and winning the Women’s World Title, which she vacated due to pregnancy.

In the first episode of season 2 of Netflix’s WWE Unreal, Naomi spoke about her WWE exit in 2022.

I’m not going to go too much into detail, but in 2022 my tag team partner Sasha Banks and I were the tag team champions at the time. A lot happened that day at work that led us to leave—literally walk out.

I needed to stand up for myself, not as Naomi, but as Trinity. And that was the first time in my life and my career that I wasn’t employed and didn’t know what to do next or where to go next.

Ed Koskey is a Senior Vice President of Creative Writing in WWE and a key member of the creative team. On that same episode of WWE Unreal, he spoke about what happened creatively when Naomi and Sasha Banks chose to walk out.

“We were doing RAW in Norfolk, Virginia. Different time, different head of creative, different head of talent relations. Naomi and her partner were gonna be in a six-pack challenge to see who was going to get a title shot at the next PLE.

Naomi and her partner weren’t comfortable at that point, being in a match where they would be pitted against each other. And unfortunately, what happened was that the show started and I was in gorilla position, when the then-head of talent relations came up and told us that Naomi and her partner had left the building.”

As you can see above, Koskey referred to the former Sasha Banks without actually saying her name.

Triple H Doesn’t Take Responsibility For Naomi’s Walkout

Paul “Triple H” Levesque has been the WWE Chief Content Officer running the main roster creative team since July 2022. In May 2022, when Naomi and Banks walked out, Vince McMahon was still the WWE Chairman overseeing the creative team, so the two women walked out on Vince’s WWE, not Triple H’s version.

When Triple H addressed the Naomi-Banks walkout on WWE Unreal, he distanced himself from it.

“I wasn’t involved in that timeframe around the main roster when she left. Sometimes it’s frustrating for talent because everybody can’t be the top person, and everybody can’t be in a major storyline at all times. She and Sasha Banks had just had enough and they left.”

Season 2 of WWE Unreal is now on Netflix with five new episodes. Triple H is featured heavily and even called Pat McAfee one of the faces of WWE, even though McAfee isn’t around that much these days.