Shayna Baszler

Shayna Andrea Baszler (/ˈbeɪzlər/ BAYZ-ler; born August 8, 1980) is an American professional wrestler, kickboxer and former mixed martial artist. She is currently signed to WWE, where she performs on the SmackDown brand. Baszler is a former two-time and longest combined-reigning NXT Women's Champion and a two-time WWE Women's Tag Team Champion with Nia Jax. Baszler was trained in mixed martial arts (MMA) by former UFC fighter Josh Barnett and in catch wrestling by Billy Robinson. She had her first professional MMA fight in 2006 and gained recognition in the following years for the use of her hammerlock submission set-up while on her back; a set-up which she has used to submit several opponents, including Roxanne Modafferi. In an audio interview on the Sherdog Radio Network, she dubbed the submission, which she created in training, as the "Shwing." Baszler was signed in 2013 by the UFC to participate on their reality television series The Ultimate Fighter – she would go on to have two professional bouts (0-2) in the company. In 2015, she was cut from the UFC and started her professional wrestling career that same year, again receiving training from Barnett. Baszler has an overall MMA record of 15 wins and 11 losses, with 13 wins by submission. Baszler, a Khun Kru in the Muay Thai Kickboxing association and a Brazilian jiu-jitsu brown belt, wanted to begin incorporating Josh Barnett's catch wrestling into her MMA training. This proved to be somewhat difficult because she could not train with Barnett in Southern California, so Barnett wrote a syllabus and filmed a video to teach her the step-by-step techniques and concepts of catch wrestling and give her tips on how to improve her verbal skills.