NXT Women’s Champion “The Queen of Spades” Shayna Baszler recently spoke with the folks from Rock Sins while working the NXT events as part of the Download Festival in England. Featured below are some of the highlights from the interview.
On how she has been handling her transition from MMA to pro wrestling: “It’s been smoother I think because I’m a catch wrestler, I’ve been a catch wrestler in MMA, Josh Barnett my main head coach for like 12 years he is a professional wrestler as well as a fighter. Bill Robinson would teach us for mixed martial arts as well as sports entertainment, this is what I’ve been in for a while so I think I have a leg up on people that are like ‘I fight MMA, I think I like this so I’m gonna try it’ I’ve been involved in this a lot longer than people realize as far as the training and the working for it too.”
On working in front of British crowds and working in front of the Download Festival crowd, which isn’t all necessarily pro wrestling fans: “Yeah, I think you have to work a little bit to show who you are because they don’t just know, but that’s the stuff I did in MMA, so it’s not unfamiliar to me to let people know who I am. It’s also interesting because a British crowd is different to an American crowd, so that aspect has been more mind-blowing to me than the fact that it’s at a music festival and not a traditional wrestling show.”
On wanting to work with the other members of the MMA version of the Four Horsewomen faction in WWE: “It’s a little of both. I’m not going to sidetrack off of my path and the things I’m doing and what I want to accomplish, but who doesn’t want their friends with them at work every day, so it’s awesome, and it’s what we’ve done, once we were living together and training together and we clicked the four of us after the Ultimate Fighter. It’s like when Ronda was UFC Champion and Jess was in Invicta and we were all kind of doing our own thing in MMA as well as supporting so it’s kind of the same thing just on the other side of the coin.”
Check out the complete Shayna Baszler interview at RockSins.com.
