A former WWE champion has revealed the ‘unplanned’ aspects of a past championship match featuring Rhea Ripley.
Shayna Baszler made the statement during a recent discussion, where she touched upon professional wrestling and working as if the fight were real.
In a video shared on her Instagram, the former NXT Women’s Champion looked at the advice about ‘learning to shoot’, saying:
“Everything we do has a real purpose; we have just lost it because we plan everything now.
“If I can leave anything as, like, my fingerprints on professional wrestling, it’s that we understand what exactly it is the f**k that we’re doing.
“I used to roll my eyes, man, at Billy (Robinson) and Josh (Barnett), because they were so old school. They were like, ‘Every professional wrestler should learn to shoot.’
“I’m just like, pssshhhh, these guys don’t know how wrestling is today. Like, it’s just not like that anymore. Nobody thinks it’s a shoot. Everybody knows what it is. But, like, I get it now, because if you know how to shoot, you can work with anyone.”
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Baszler would go on to reflect on her matches with Rhea Ripley and revealed that one aspect from one such encounter was unplanned, saying:
“I think I always had really good matches with Rhea (Ripley), and I think it’s because we beat the snot out of each other.
“I say that, and then, I think about if I would have to wrestle Rhea, and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, gonna be hurtin’ for a while,’ but we like to beat the cr*p out of each other.
“And, to be honest, that match I had with Rhea at NXT, where she won the title off me, is one of my favorite moments.
“Yes, as a match, but that whole thing with the fans jumping the rail and then them sending the locker room out was not planned.
“The fans jumped the rail to celebrate. Hunter (Triple H), on the fly, called, like, the locker room to come out, and I remember selling on the floor at the end, but it’s hard in this day and age to get the crowd to be so f**king happy the bad guy lost and the good guy won that they forgot for a second that this was a show and they jumped the rails to celebrate.
“So, I remember being on the floor, like… You know what I mean? I’m supposed to be angry and selling, but I remember, just like ‘F**k, yeah.’ One of my best moments in wrestling was like, ‘We got ’em’. In today’s day, we got ’em to be happy the bad guy lost, like, truly happy the bad guy lost. Not just like, ‘That was a great match.’ Like, ‘F**k you, Shayna.’ You know, like that.
“It was awesome. And then I got sad because I was like, ‘I don’t wanna go to Raw and SmackDown.'”
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The match in question took place on the December 18 episode of WWE NXT in 2019 and would see Ripley as NXT Women’s Champion until her loss to Charlotte Flair at WrestleMania 36 the following year.
Although released in May 2025, Baszler has maintained a good relationship with WWE, including in a backstage capacity, and recently appeared on NXT.
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