WWE's Shayna Baszler On How Vince McMahon Changed Her Wrestling Style
Former NXT Women's Champion reveals how conversations with Vince McMahon changed her style.
Shayna Baszler's recent appearance on Renee Paquette's Oral Sessions podcast saw her touch on all kinds of topics relating to her life and career as a professional wrestler, with one of the most notable revelations being WWE Chairman Vince McMahon's apparent influence on her style of wrestling.
The current Women's Tag Team Champion revealed that McMahon pulled her aside for a chat shortly after transitioning from NXT to Raw (h/t POST Wrestling for the transcriptions):-
"He gave 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 work rate is shown on pay-per-views and at NXT, so don’t get so hellbent on weekly Raw TV, because that’s where we build the story for the work rate that you can do on a pay-per-view.’ So he’s like, ‘You’ve got this thing. I don’t want you to do any pro wrestling. Got it?’ Okay, got it."
Baszler then described a match where she was "going off the map and beating someone up," which Vince loved. The experimentation then continued in a match with Natalya:-
"Nattie’s trained with me in an MMA gym, so 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’s like, ‘Well [it] looked like you guys were just fighting each other.’ So he makes us do it again. This is when we were doing the stuff at the PC and we were recording some episodes and doing some live. So he goes and makes us do it right away again and I’m just flabbergasted. I’m still new up there so I don’t know how stuff is, and Nattie’s like, ‘I got you, we’ll do this.’ So we go and we do a match that she basically calls to me and it’s a normal match, you know? And we go in the back and he loves it and I’m so confused at this point. I’m like, ‘Man, we did like headlock takeover, drop down leapfrog. I don’t understand,’ and so I go and I sit outside Vince’s office for a long time because I’m like — it’s scary and you’re asking the guys outside the office like, ‘Is he in a good mood today?’"
On the "nerve-wracking" experience of meeting with Vince after the situation described above, Baszler said the following:-
"I was like, ‘Man 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. Just give me a chance’ and 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 100 times, I’ll do it, I’ll figure it out. Just give me time. I’m just letting you know I’m aware I don’t have it. Just give me time. I’ll make you money’."
McMahon's response? "Can't wait."
The Queen of Spades credited working with Sasha Banks and Bayley with helping her stop working so hard to try and impress Vince, though the Chairman was gradually being won over by her efforts. "It has been this big learning curve," she said, saying that finding the perfect stylistic balance is a constant struggle.