By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Shayna Baszler
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On whether she works for WWE: “I’m not officially hired, but I have a good relationship with them. I’m officially guest coaching when the opportunity comes. I don’t hate it. I actually like it a lot more than I thought I would. So how that all came about is that Daniel Bryan, it was during COVID, and Daniel Bryan was always the guy sitting in Gorilla (position). It’s kind of like, I don’t know if it’s still the same way now, but it’s kind of like only the top guys can sit back on a headset in Gorilla. There’s just too much, it’s not enough room, so you don’t want to crowd the place. But he was talking to me about, if you ever get a chance to sit in the truck or sit on a headset, it completely changed my wrestling. I feel like my wrestling went to another level, because you get to see what they look for, and how they call things, and the time it takes. So you feel weird making a face for too long, but they have just TV stuff.”
On whether she feels like she is done wrestling for WWE: “Never say never in this business. I mean, weirder things have happened, right? If I get over with something crazy on the Indies or something, and I get an offer. It’s a strange question, because I don’t know that I’m ever going to be someone that’s like, Yeah, I’m ready to be done. I’ll always feel like I can go.”
Whether her WrestleMania 36 match with Becky Lynch still felt like WrestleMania despite the event being held at the WWE Performance Center: “So I remember pulling up to the PC that day for my WrestleMania match, and sitting in my car, I parked outside, and sitting in my car and being kind of down. This is my WrestleMania match. I have three nieces, a set of twins, and then an older one. And at the time, they were five and seven years old, and the twins, five-year-olds, were still at a stage where they believed wrestling. They watched me fight, so I don’t know that they knew that it was any different at that time.
“I had gotten them all tickets, and they were going to come and sit in the friends and family section at freaking WrestleMania. They love wrestling. They believe it. I’m going to have a title match at WrestleMania. They were going to be there and see this. Anybody that’s seen WrestleMania, could you imagine being five and being a super fan and your aunt that you think is a hero is wrestling, and you’re gonna see this huge thing. And then they couldn’t. I remember being pretty down about that. I am proud of the match that we had. I wish I could have that match with Becky in front of a WrestleMania crowd, because energy changes everything. And definitely the energy, WrestleMania, it definitely would have changed stuff. But I do feel a sort of pride in the fact that we did that, because it was at a time when nothing else was going on in the world. There was no sports, even TV stopped shooting stuff for a while.”
Whether she knew her SummerSlam 2023 match was going to be Ronda Rousey’s last match: “So I knew, because I’m very close with her. That was the last date on her contract, because she had planned to have another baby, and that was the plan. I mean, Ronda loves nothing more now than being a mom, and so I knew for a while. For so long, we wanted to start that story. I think if we would have had longer, I think that would have benefited us a lot, because I think we did a great job with the time that we had. But we were begging for this tag team to start, because we knew it started with us being this tag team. Starts with us being this tag team. And I think, to my understanding, Vince [McMahon], it might not be true, but somebody had told me that he didn’t believe that the crowd knew that Ronda and I were friends. So if you go back and watch, me and Ronda tried to create these moments for crowd reactions, so that he could see that people know, like when she showed up as a surprise in the Rumble, and then I came out at number 30 that year, I did my thing, cleaned house, and then it was me and her, and it was just me and her and the crowd [cheered]. Then, you know, Charlotte came and took it away.
“We were like, Oh, for sure, he’s got to know now. Then we had another one where we had a tag match, but we were on opposing teams, and we were like, All right, we’re not going to touch because we don’t want to give that away, but let’s have this moment. And the crowd came for that as well. We’re like, God, he’s got to know. I think I was just in a different place at the time. She was like, top of the card, Ronda Rousey, and I was doing my own thing on the mid-card at the time. So I don’t think he saw our paths crossing, really, but we were begging for it like forever to start this. That’s the reason Ronda started wrestling, I think, is we want to do this fun story. But it didn’t work out that way. And like I said, I think we did a good job with the time that we did have.”
On whether she thinks Rousey is finished wrestling: “I never think Ronda is done. She’s a crazy person. I don’t know. She loves being a mom. It would take a bit, but CM Punk came back. Ronda Rousey can come back.”
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