WWE star and former two-time NXT women’s champion Shayna Baszler recently spoke with D-Von Dudley on his Table Talk podcast about all things pro-wrestling, including how she is a big fan of Japanese legend, Minoru Suzuki. Highlights from the interview are below.
How she loved Japanese wrestling and was a big Minoru Suzuki fan:
I started wrestling and I did some time wrestling in Japan. I did the indie thing that everyone does and went to Japan and lived and wrestled there for a while and all that and just because of the nature of my training and my coaches, I really paid attention a lot to the Japanese wrestling scene. That was, I don’t know, that’s just the way I came up, and so, Minoru Suzuki is one of my all-time favorite wrestlers, still today and he comes out with a towel over his head like Taz, like a hood and I remember thinking like, ‘Oh man, I wanna do something that’s kind of like him but not exactly like him so I’m gonna put the towel around me. I’m not gonna put it on my head’ and then I was like, ‘Aw man, the sleeper, that’s like I can get to the back in submission wrestling, shoot wrestling. I know all these tricky ways. That’s gonna be great. That’ll be a great finisher for me.
Says she approached Samoa Joe to let him know she didn’t intentionally copy him:
I remember I signed [with WWE] and I was like, ‘Am I Samoa Joe? Like did I just become –’ he wears the towel, like what? So I went and told him this story and I was like, ‘I want you to know –’ so I was in NXT for a while but I came up to Raw, that was like one of the first things I did was go up to him and go, ‘I did not intentionally copy everything that you did, but I’m sorry? I don’t know’ and Joe’s cool. He was like, ‘Ah. Don’t worry about it’ but, it was funny.
(H/T and transcribed by Post Wrestling)