Newly signed AEW star Paige VanZant was recently interviewed on ESPN MMA as she spoke about immersing herself in the wrestling business, among other topics that were also discussed.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
Paige VanZant on wanting to immerse herself in pro wrestling: “I love it. I think the only, my only frustrations so far with my pro wrestling is I would show up and I would say, ‘Hey, I want to jump off the ropes tonight. I want to slam someone through a table tonight. Someone’s getting slammed through a table’. And they’re like, ‘Oh, you should probably train first.’ And I’m like, ‘No, I’m ready.’ Like so, I think my only concern is that they don’t let me do the crazy stuff right away. I want to go in there and do all the crazy stuff. I want to fully immerse myself in this world. But yeah, I want to be a part of all of it. Everything I’ve seen, CM Punk’s dog collar match was epic. I just feel like it’s a whole side of me that hasn’t been shown yet and you see a little bit of it in BKFC because of the violence, the bare-knuckle boxing. But this is a whole other world that’s going to open up and people will see a whole new side of Paige Van Zant.”
On making the transition to wrestling from MMA: “It definitely did and I feel like a lot of people, when they come out of, you know, pro fighting, MMA, boxing, there’s always a conversation to do something like pro wrestling, but for me, I wasn’t doing it because I had to. I did it because I wanted to. I showed up because I wanted to be a part of the show. I was doing all those for free because I wanted to be part of their event, and I just stuck around long enough until they decided that they couldn’t let me go.”
On the specifics of her AEW contract: “It is a long-term deal. I’m not sure the specifics, of course. I think they want to get me in the training room and they want to get me ready for my first match and then after, after that, we’ll see what happens and they’ll see exactly where they want to place me within the division. I just think that it’s gonna be a pretty significant amount. I would love to see my face in AEW every week, but we’ll see.”
