On a recent edition of the “Stories With Brisco & Bradshaw” podcast, Josh Barnett revealed the advice he gave Shayna Baszler as she transitioned from MMA to professional wrestling.
Barnett trained Baszler to wrestle when she quit MMA, and the rest is history.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On giving advice to Baszler early on: “But when she gets into the market, she starts having these promoters tell her to wear MMA gloves to the ring and do all this stuff. And I’m like, ‘Well, okay but everybody already knows you’re a shooter. You don’t have to wear gloves and you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to. They already know that if you’re wearing those gloves and you’re not punching people in the face and knocking them out, which, if you’re going to do that on out there, takes a lot more effort to learn how to do that it’s a little trickier and let alone, I don’t know if these girls are going to want you socking them in the face.”
On Baszler not needing to try and prove how tough she is: “But if you’re hitting them and they ain’t going down well, it just makes you look bad, and you don’t have to. You don’t have to try and get people to believe what you do, you grab that girl’s wrist, it has way more impact when you do it than when a lot of these other girls do.”