Shayna Baszler comments on one of her WWE matches where she felt creatively “handcuffed”
While speaking to Ariel Helwani, former WWE star Shayna Baszler reflected on her match against Ronda Rousey at the 2023 SummerSlam PLE…
“Me and Ronda had this MMA-style match at SummerSlam, and you can say what you want — we knew going in what was going to happen. We were pretty handcuffed for a lot of what went on around that, but I got so messed up. I legitimately, like, shoot, had my eye swell shut, I broke my thumb, I hyperextended my elbow… I got so messed up in that match. And I remember seeing people be like, ‘If they were going to do an MMA match, they should have just hit each other for real.’ And I’m like, do you guys not—like, we were! Yeah, but you’re so used to seeing an arm swing back and the hair fly that you forget what real looks like. And so I think even in that, we achieved what I set out to do in some sense.”
“We were very aware that in a stadium environment, that sort of match — to a pro wrestling crowd — was going to be hard to see. We were kind of counting on a Jumbotron, but the stadium didn’t have one. So we knew it’d be hard for people to see. On top of that, because we were in a stadium, a lot of people were talking about why it wasn’t a cage match. The thing is, they didn’t have the structure in a stadium — unlike in a bigger arena — to lower a cage or a fight pit. I think it would have been different if — and I’m not saying this as a jab — but if we had been in the men’s title picture and it was the last match of the night. Then they could have brought that stuff out and built the cage around it, or something along those lines. But because we weren’t the last match, there was no way to quickly cart out the structure, build it, and then take it back down in time for the next match. So, we tried to get creative, but it was tough. The venue made it tough. I also think Ronda having a sort of hard-out date kind of handcuffed us — we had to rush. We had to do the story now. I think it would have been better served to have that sort of match as a blow-off after a longer feud.”