wrestling / News

Shayna Baszler On The MMA Horsewomen’s Advantage Over NXT Horsewomen, Her Message to Io Shirai After NXT Takeover

June 14, 2020 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Shayna Baszler

On this week’s The Bump, SHayna Baszler discussed the longstanding rivalry between the MMA Horsewomen and NXT Horsewomen. A match pitting the MMA Horsewomen (Baszler, Ronda Rousey, Marina Shafir, & Jessamyn Duke) against their NXT counterparts (Becky Lynch, Charlotte Flair, Bayley, and Sasha Banks) is one that has been speculated about for years, particularly as Rousey and Baszler have each gone up against Lynch. The match has never come to fruition and, with Lynch and Rousey on hiatus right now, won’t happen anytime soon. But Baszler took a moment when asked about the rivalry to explain why she and her friends have the advantage over the NXT (now main roster, of course) four.

Baszler also talked about the tweet that she sent after Io Shirai’s NXT Women’s Championship win at NXT Takeover: In Your House of a clip of their Stardom match from 2017. As you can see below, the clip features Baszler hitting Shirai with a suplex into a sleeper hold. Highlights and the full video are also below:

On her message to Io Shirai after Shirai’s Title win: “You know, I love working with Io, just because someone that brings such a different style as her is always interesting. The puzzle is interesting to figure out, you know. I’ve always talked about figuring out the puzzle of a human, and she’s a very specific type of puzzle. And that’s not to forget that she, in my opinion, is in the argument to be the best woman wrestler in the world. And I’ve beaten her twice, three times if you count a four-way, you know? So I have to just remind the people that the last time the locker room down, you know, the locker room in NXT and everything was in order was when I held the title. So I just gotta keep things fresh in people’s mind, because their memory of things that happened is only as long as their Twitter timeline.”

On the NXT Horsewomen vs. MMA Horsewomen feud: “Well, here’s the thing that I always argue, that I think people misunderstand is that, when we say we’re the Four Horsewomen. Like, we’ve never denied that those four girls are great wrestlers. They put the NXT women’s division on their shoulders at that time, you know? Talking like 2014-ish. They built that first, kind of like, wave up. We’ve never, ever, ever denied that they’re not four great wrestlers. But we are an actual team. Those four have never gotten along ever at the same time for more than two minutes at the end of a PPV. We are an actual team. You can’t just pick like, eleven great football players and call them the 2019 Chiefs, you know what I mean? There was a specific team that was a team.

“So we’re not saying they’re not great wrestlers. But we’re the team. We’re the actual team. So that being said, if they wanna decide that they can get along for more than a couple minutes at a time, and they wanna try to piece together a game plan where they can work together against us four that have been friends for years, actual friends and an actual team? They can go ahead and try. Bodies are just submissions waiting to happen, we’ll happily get in there with them.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit WWE’s The Bump with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.