Paige VanZant comments on signing a contract with AEW

MMA fighter Paige VanZant did an interview with ESPN.com and talked about her new contract with AEW. Here are the highlights…

Continuing MMA: “I do want to do MMA still and I do see my future in MMA. I’m 27 years old. I’ve just been fortunate enough that my career got kick-started at a very young age.”

Wanting to get into wrestling: “The more I got involved, the more I loved it. I just realized I was meant to be a part of the show. I wanted to be one of the wrestlers for them and I knew I would be really good at it.”

Her training: “My only frustration so far with my whole pro-wrestling journey is I would show up and I said, ‘Hey, I want to jump off the ropes tonight. I want to slam someone through a table tonight — someone is getting slammed through a table.’ They’re like, uh, you should probably train first. My only concern is they don’t let me do the crazy stuff right away. I want to go in there and I want to do all the crazy stuff. I want to fully immerse myself in this world.”

What she can do for AEW: “I think I bring a lot to the table. I have a whole different audience that doesn’t necessarily follow [AEW] yet. I have the pro fighting audience — pro MMA and pro boxing. I think I bring a lot of value with my name brand.”

VanZant ‘not closing any doors’ on MMA return

6:47 PM ET Marc RaimondiESPN Staff Writer Paige VanZant just signed a professional wrestling contract to go along with her deal with Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship (BKFC). But she has not closed any kind of doors on mixed martial arts, where she first made her name.