AEW superstar, former women’s champion, and this year’s Owen Hart Memorial tournament winner Britt Baker recently spoke with Mel Magazine about a variety of subjects, including how she is able to balance her life as a top AEW talent, and a dentist. Highlights from the interview are below.
Balancing her schedule between wrestling and her dentistry:
“Monday and Tuesday I’m at the dental office. On Tuesday, I’ll work as late as I possibly can, which is usually until around 4 or 5 p.m. Then I go home, grab my suitcase and go straight to the airport. Wednesday is when Dynamite airs, which is our main TV show. I’m usually up pretty late that night until about 2 a.m. on Thursday morning. I might get one or two hours of sleep before I have to catch the 5 or 6 a.m. flight back home to get to the dental office. I land at the airport, go straight to the dental office, and then I work all day until 7 p.m. at night. I’ll go home, eat and then find some time to train. I’m usually at the gym pretty late on Monday, Thursday and Friday. I keep very late training hours.”
How every so often she gets weekends off:
“On some Fridays I have to work at the dental office, but some days I don’t. That day is always a good day for me if I want to train in the wrestling ring or get a couple good workouts in, do some yoga or run a lot of errands. A lot of weekends I do appearances and signings. So I might leave home on Friday night, go do an appearance and then get home Sunday night. But every now and then, I get my weekends off, which is absolutely fantastic because I can finally catch up on the ton of laundry I’ll have sitting at home.”
Says she has the same degree as Isaac Yankem:
“Yes. Dr. Isaac Yakem was DDS, and I’m Dr. Britt Baker, D.M.D. Same degree, different letters. I never really had a gimmick or a character that wasn’t me. My name is my name: I’m Britt Baker, and I’m a dentist, so I don’t really know what it is to play something that I’m not. I guess in terms of being a heel or a villain, it’s pushing the limits more than I ordinarily would in terms of smack talk, or just being an ass for lack of a better word. But I have so much fun doing that.”
Talks her wrestling fame influencing interactions with her current patients:
“It does get tricky sometimes when more and more fans come into the office because I want to be a professional. I’m a health-care provider and a physician when I’m in the dental office. I’m not there to entertain you; I’m not there to elicit a love or a hate reaction. I want you to trust me as a provider, and not be bamboozled into a gimmick or a character. It’s a really gray area there, and I’m still trying to navigate those waters. If anything, I think being a dentist helps me interact with people and fans more as a wrestler because people usually don’t like to come to the dentist. They don’t like you. You have to really win them over and earn their trust, and that helps with interacting with people in general.”