Shayna Baszler was recently interviewed by Renee Paquette (FKA Renee Young) on the Oral Sessions podcast and discussed her transitioning to the WWE Style, her match with Natayla that had to be restarted, and more.
Baszler had this to say about the match with Natayla that needed to be restarted and the advice Vince McMahon gave her when she first started on RAW:
“You come in with this image that he’s this unhinged, crazy guy, but he’s always so nice and critiques me really well. He’s never been the way you imagined. You build up this monster in your mind so much. When I first started wrestling on RAW, he gave me a talk that was like, ‘Look, you have something different to offer. You have a unique look. The thing you have to start learning now that you’re on RAW is that your workrate has shown on pay-per-views and in NXT. So, don’t get so hellbent on weekly RAW TV because that’s where we build the story for the workrate that you can do on a pay-per-view.’ So, he’s like, ‘You have this thing, and I don’t want you to do any pro wrestling. Got it?’ Got it.
“So, I have this match, and it looks like I’m going off the map and beating someone up. He loves it. The next week, I do it again, and he loves it. The next week, I have a match with Nattie. Nattie’s trained in an MMA ring with me. I was like, ‘Listen, let’s just shoot around a little bit and then we’ll get to what we need to get to.’ We do it, he hates it. We go in the back, and he goes, ‘It looked like you guys were just fighting each other.’ So, he makes us do it again. This is when we were doing stuff at the PC and recording some episodes and doing some live. He goes and makes us do it right away again. I’m just flabbergasted. I’m still new, so I don’t know how stuff is. Nattie is like, ‘I got you. We’ll do this.’ We go an do a match that she basically calls to me, and it’s a normal match. We go in the back, and he loves it. I’m so confused at this point. I’m like, we did headlock, takeover, dropdown, leapfrog. I don’t understand.”
Shayna had this to say when asked about meeting Vince:
“So, I go and sit outside Vince’s office for a long time. It’s scary, and you’re asking is he in a good mood today? It’s nerve-wracking because he’s the boss. I go in there, and I don’t even know what I wanted out of it. I think it was just to get it off my chest, but I was like, ‘Listen, I know I have something that no one else has. I know I can bring a certain legitimacy to this that no other female has. I don’t know how to figure it out week to week yet, but just give me a chance.’ I was like, ‘You’ll never have to worry about me being in shape if you want me to go out there and wrestle the same match a hundred times. I’ll do it. I’ll figure it out, just give me time. Like, I’m just letting you know I’m aware I don’t have it, just give me time. I’ll make you money.’ And he was like, ‘Can’t wait.’”
Baszler lastly spoke about her adjustment to the WWE style:
“I think it was finally when I started working with Sasha and Bayley where I think in the ring, I stopped trying so hard to impress Vince and just started feeling comfortable in my stuff. It was finally where it started being like, ‘That’s it.’ He’s like, ‘You’re getting it.’ So, it has been this big learning curve. And this is like leaning on Randy Orton being like, ‘Don’t worry about the fans saying it’s boring.’ Just giving advice, and AJ Styles giving advice. But it has been a hard balance. I have this old school style, but I can’t necessarily do it how they did back then. So, it’s still a juggling process.”
Credit to Renee Paquette’s Oral Sessions Podcast and H/T to 411Mania for the transcription.
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