Shayna Baszler – The Queen of Spades Ultimate Fighter 18 Weekly Q&A Episode 11
By Dave Carpinello
One of women’s mixed martial arts true pioneers with an extensive fan following, “The Queen of Spades” Shayna Baszler is a member of Team Rousey on The Ultimate Fighter 18 Team Rousey vs. Team Tate. Baszler has been fighting professionally since 2003 and has amassed a record of 15-8-0 with notable wins over Julie Kedzie, Sarah D’Alelio, Alexis Davis, Roxanne Modafferi and Keiko Tamai. The victory over Tamai was groundbreaking for the sport as Baszler became the first fighter to win a fight with the daunted “Twister” submission. Training under “The Warmaster” and catch-submission specialist, Josh Barnett, Baszler was definitely one of the favorites on this season. In her fight to get into the TUF house, Baszler faced Colleen Schneider and won via an armbar submission in the first round. On Episode 2, she faced Julianna Pena and in a shocking upset was submitted in the second round. Shayna will be giving her answers to your questions weekly every Monday throughout the season!
Here are some of your questions and Shayna’s answers from TUF 18 Episode 11:
1. You and most of your castmates continue to bash Julianna Pena, do you have any specific examples to justify your hate because they certainly haven’t shown much on the episodes to explain why nobody likes her.
Shayna Baszler – Seeing a few minutes of someone each week on your TV is a hell of a lot different than living with someone 24/7 for six and a half weeks! So if you want to say that you haven’t seen anything, your right you haven’t SEEN anything. There is a reason that 15 people in the house found her annoying and what do you know, she thought that she wasn’t. Even the two nicest people in the house, Josh Hill and Roxanne Modafferi, thought she was annoying. People are going to form their own opinions based on snippets that they see on TV and not believe us that lived with her and that is just fine. Haters have to hate!
2. What did you think of Pena’s comment that it had something to do with “Lesbian Love” for the reason that some of the female fighters in the house didn’t like her?
Shayna Baszler – I think that is one of things that was so annoying about her, making ridiculous comments like that one all of the time.
3. What did you and the other girls in the TUF house think when Sarah Moras busted up Roxanne’s eye with an elbow in practice?
Shayna Baszler – We all gave Sarah crap about that, I said way back at the beginning of these Q&A sessions that we all defended Roxanne, we all felt the need to protect her and we all loved Roxanne. So whenever anything happened to her and especially that incident, we all gave Sarah a lot of crap for it.
4. Where did you get that ridiculous hat you were wearing on last week’s episode?
Shayna Baszler – I don’t really want to tell you the whole story just yet in case they (the producers) decide to show it on one of the final episodes but I did get that hat and a cape for a purpose. If they don’t show it I will tell you about it in next week’s Q&A.
5. Did you like the customized Ronda Rousey shirts and what did you think of Sarah Moras saying she was going to sell hers on E-Bay?
Shayna Baszler – You have seen Ronda wear those for most of the season and I thought they were cool looking. The best thing about that was that it broke up the monotony of being in the house for one night. Originally she was just going to show us how to make the shirts but then she took over and customized one for everyone. As far as Sarah selling hers on E-Bay, she might get a nice price if the timing is right.
6. I am getting confused, was it Team Rousey vs Team Tate or Team Rousey vs Team Julianna?
Shayna Baszler – [laughing] The truth of the matter is that as crappy as it was for the other fighters, that situation with Julianna and even Chris Holdsworth kind of happened naturally because they all trained together before the show. Holdsworth trained at Team Alpha Male and Miesha Tate and Bryan Caraway trained there before and Julianna trains with Miesha. It was their own little group within a group and it gave them an advantage but I don’t want to bang on Miesha much for the situation because I could see how it could happen. If I was coaching and one of my teammates was on there, I would probably end up showing some type of favoritism along the way, not on purpose but it would probably just come naturally. Miesha did say though that those two were always asking for extra help during training and it probably came down to the fact that they were more comfortable asking for it.
7. What did you think of Tate denying having favorites on her team and then bashing the other fighters on her team for complaining?
Shayna Baszler – Like I said, it obviously happened but I think Miesha should have just admitted it and explained why, because of their connections prior to coming on the show. I also wouldn’t necessarily say that she was bashing the other fighters but saying that they didn’t work as hard as Julianna and Chris was a bit short-sided. I definitely felt bad for Sarah and Raquel Pennington, I wasn’t at their practices so I know as much about them as you guys do, but I do know that those guys would come home from practice and say things like “that was fun attending the Julianna and Chris training show”. Which was weird to me because we had team practice everyday with everybody doing everything together, but it kind of sounded like it was everyone did there own thing at the Team Tate practices.
8. Can you give us a breakdown of the Moras and Pena fight?
Shayna Baszler – I think it was another example of a fighter just not showing up ready, I don’t know if Sarah was affected by all of the pressure that all of us were putting on her to beat Julianna or whatever the reason was but Sarah didn’t show up and Julianna executed a great gameplan against her and waited it out until she got the finish. She had great positioning and took advantage of Sarah’s mistakes and she submitted her, there is nothing else to be said about it.
9. On the previews for this week’s show, it keeps showing Dana White saying that “this has never happened on any season of The Ultimate Fighter before”, can you atleast give us a hint of what to expect on Wednesday?
Shayna Baszler – No problem, so ………………….. 🙂 Just watch this Wednesday.
Keep your horns up and don’t miss this week’s all new episode, Wednesday on FOX Sports 1! – The Queen of Spades
Send in your questions following this week’s episode. You can submit your questions for Shayna by sending them to ad***@*************er.com or you can post them below and she will answer them each week following the next show on FOX Sports 1! You can also follow Shayna on her Twitter page and Facebook Fan page.
