Posted on 12/30/125 by Colin Vassallo
Shayna Baszler sat down with Chris Van Vliet at West Coast
Creative Studio in Hollywood, California to discuss her WWE
release and still doing some work for the company as a
coach, if a return as a wrestler is still possible, her
dominant main roster call-up and feud with Becky Lynch,
being Ronda Rousey’s final WWE opponent and a possible
Rousey return, her love of WarHammer 40K, and more!
So are you working 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. 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.”
Do you feel like your career as a WWE Superstar is over?
“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.”
Did that match with Becky Lynch still feel like
WrestleMania?
“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.”
Did you know that match at SummerSlam was going to be
Ronda’s last?
“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, 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.”
Do you think Ronda is done?
“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.”