Shayna Baszler has high praise for Josh Barnett.
Barnett is often recognized for being one of the best athletes that has crossed over between the worlds of professional wrestling and MMA. Although Barnett doesn't wrestle frequently, his skills are always on full display when he steps into the squared circle.
While speaking to Fightful for a new interview, Shayna Baszler was asked to name a few of her training partners that are good at doing WWE-related stuff. In response, Baszler spoke highly of Josh Barnett.
"Anybody that has trained with Josh (Barnett). Especially for Josh, and coming from the lineage I come from with Billy (Robinson), pro wrestling is very important to Josh. It’s not just another thing to do to make some money. There is a very important reason for it. When training with Josh, whether you know it or not, you’re training for pro wrestling. The style that I wrestle, you can compare it to people who train with Josh. You look at Jessamyn’s [Jessamyn Duke] pro wrestling, Marina (Shafir), even, we all train with Josh and you can see it in our work, very similar styles. I would pick anybody on the team, ‘We can do it.’"
Baszler went on to talk about how it is important to her to display her style of wrestling on television.
"I just talked about how important wrestling is to Josh. Josh is like a martial arts father to me, a role model of mine. In saying that, it’s very important that I also carry on this tradition and wave this banner of catch wrestling and what Billy and Josh believe pro wrestling to be. I struggle with it sometimes because obviously it’s a different era than UWFI, but when I can do things like what Ronda and I did at SummerSlam, I get the feeling that Billy would be proud of something like that. That stuff is important to me and I’m proud of that."
Elsewhere in the interview, Baszler said that cross promotion was in consideration for her match with Ronda Rousey at SummerSlam 2023. Fans can learn more here.
Fans can check out Fightful's full interview with Shayna Baszler in the video linked at the top of this article.
