Shayna Baszler Discusses Potentially Reuniting With MMA Horsewomen in WWE, Being NXT Women’s Champion

– Shayna Baszler spoke with Rock Sins for a new interview discussing NXT’s shows at Download Festival over the past weekend, her NXT run so far and more.

On how the transition from MMA to wrestling has gone for her: “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 a UK crowd at Download Festival: “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 being NXT Women’s Champion: “It’s easy for me to be the hardest worker in the room, I’m competitive in that aspect. I knew with the goal of having the title what I wanted that to mean, and it was the legitimacy and the old throwback to the days where people should like the champion but there’s also a side that makes people go ‘Woah, I’m not going to upset them’ and that is something that I have wanted to uphold as the champion. That is important to me and the pressure on myself to kind of bring that back to the championship.”

On how she would describe NXT in one sentence: “In one sentence?…NXT is the most exciting brand in sports entertainment that you probably haven’t seen yet, so check it out.”

On if she wants to reunite with the MMA horsewomen in WWE or go solo for now: “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.”