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Interview: Shayna Baszler

wwe27 March 2020 07:54| © SuperSport
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Shayna Baszler © SuperSport.com

We captured interview with WWE Superstar Shayna Baszler ahead of her historic match against Becky Lynch for the RAW Women’s Title.

How has your MMA background influenced your WWE career so far?

“Obviously there is a familiarity with making that walk to the ring, or a cage, or whatever it may be, to face someone in one on one personal combat. Someone is there to stop you, you are there to stop them. Being in that situation and also in front of a large live audience, and all the lights and stuff that comes with TV, that is a very familiar feeling for me. There was no adjustment time as far as that happened... I’ve been in every situation you can think of in a contest like that… The “submission magician” isn’t just an invented name. Mauro called me that when he was calling one of my MMA fights.. Never feeling lost or stressed out is the biggest advantage I have coming from Mixed Martial Arts.”

Has Ronda Rousey been a big influence for you?

“If it was up to Ronda’s mother, she would take full credit for the way my life and career has gone! … There was a time where I was living with Ronda in a house in Venice and I happened to have wresting on the TV, and I was watching wrestling… and Ronda’s mum came to the living room and she goes ‘you are not watching this, you are studying this’… and she said ‘keep that in mind’ and then walked away.”

“Ronda set the four of us up in a way that we could concentrate on being exactly what we are… You don’t make a lot of money in MMA, especially at first… She set us up so that we could just concentrate on showing up at the gym… We were free to concentrate on being whatever it is we wanted to be and that is what really set the tone for where I am at today.”

What would it mean to you to become RAW Women’s Champion at WrestleMania?

“It’ll crush Becky Lynch. She wants to talk about my whole life being a lie? …I think fans that aren’t familiar with the way that I wrestle, I’m here to show them a little bit of reality. This is what’s real. This is what really happens if you get in a fight with someone that you shouldn’t. This is how it works. This is what happens when you put a small animal in a lions dens and the lion wants to play with its food. This is reality…. I have a burden that I have to show what reality is and if I have that Title everyone will be forced to look at it.”

Do you have a final message for Becky Lynch heading into WrestleMania?

“I think that Becky Lynch, and her fans included, have gotten so used to seeing ‘fake’ – that for her to stand in a ring and talk about everything I do becoming a lie? …Everyone’s about to get hit with a hard dose of reality. I am that reality.”

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