Paige VanZant Confirms She Met With WWE Before Choosing AEW
One of AEW's latest recruits, Paige VanZant, joined Renee Paquette & Miesha Tate on SiriusXM's Throwing Down with Renee & Miesha to discuss her current pro wrestling training.
It was noted that VanZant has been training with WWE legend and Attitude Era star, Gangrel, and Paige explained that she has noticed a lot of similarities to her combat sports background.
"Honestly, it's amazing," Paige said. "A lot of similarities and I think that I'm going to pick things up quickly, but the hard thing is to break some of the habits. The moves are so similar from MMA training to pro wrestling training, but there's just those few differences that you really want to focus on.
"So I think that's going to be the hardest thing is just to adapt because I am still training MMA, to separate the two when I'm doing separate things just to make sure, alright, I'm wrestling now, I need to, you know, just make those few adjustments."
Paige VanZant also discussed currently working with All Elite Wrestling. The MMA star disclosed that she had previously visited WWE Headquarters, but the plans that were presented didn't quite fit with what she was looking for.
"I did know that my career would take me into pro wrestling eventually," Paige explained. "I wasn't sure what venue that would be, if that would be WWE, or if that would be AEW. I've been a fan of both. So I actually did make it out about a year ago to the WWE Headquarters. You know, they had a different plan for what they wanted for me, whereas AEW I am so excited that they were happy to partner with me and let me continue to fight MMA, continue to do bare-knuckle boxing. They are really honestly on board to just build my career, build me as a wrestler, and still let me be myself."
VanZant explained that at the moment she is just learning the basics of pro wrestling, so she has not found it complicated just yet. She did disclose that naturally being a sports athlete, picking things up has been fairly straightforward.
"The difference I think for the pro wrestling, for me, it's not as complicated yet, just because I'm learning the basics," Paige said. "It's just learning the differences between what I do at MMA and what I do at American Top Team, and then what I will be doing at AEW. It's very similar, and luckily I'm an athlete so I'm picking things up really quickly. But, it's still a lot of differences, so it's more that we're doing the basics and breaking it down. It's more tedious right now than like hard, hard work."
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit SiriusXM's Throwing Down with Renee & Miesha with an h/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.