Shayna Baszler

Shayna Baszler has been a vocal advocate for the movement to establish a South Dakota athletic commission for combat sports. Her speeches on the subject have influenced even people with contradictory opinion, including Rep. Steve Hickey, who once equated MMA to child pornography. Hickey paid a visit to Baszler at the Next Edge Academy of Martial Arts, a facility where she trains, and later stated that while his views on the sport had not changed, he had come to regret the analogy.

She serves as the coach for the Sioux Falls Roller Dollz, a roller derby team based out of South Dakota. She has also received an Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certificate.

Shayna Baszler was born on August 8, 1980, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota to parents Skip and Margaret Baszler. She is of German descent from her father’s side and of Chinese ancestry from her mother’s. She studied at MidAmerica Nazarene University in Kansas from where she graduated with a degree in religion. She began her MMA training soon after.

During the initial period of her MMA training, Shayna Baszler also wanted to incorporate catch wrestling into her training alongside Muay Thai and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. However, she could not train under Josh Barnett under who she wished to train, as she could not travel to Southern California where Barnett’s training centre is located. At her request, he created a syllabus for her as well as a video on catch wrestling.

It was also Barnett who gave her the suggestion to carry an electric guitar to the cage to demonstrate that she was outspoken. The gimmick helped her to project herself as a rock star-type personality.

Besides ‘The Queen of Spades’, she has also been dubbed as the “submission magician” due to her extended arsenal of submission manoeuvres. She refers to her fans as “Queen’s Army”

Baszler got her start in MMA at South Dakota-based promotion Reality Cage Fighting against Tina Johnson on October 31, 2003. After winning that, she also came out victorious in her next match, which was against Christy Zimmerman on November 14, 2003. However, she suffered her first defeat against Kelly Kobold in the match after that, which took place on May 15, 2004.

In 2005, she fought for Jungle Madness 2 and won her match against Heather Lobs. For the next three years, she competed at various other independent promotions, including UCS, Ring of Fire, Freestyle Combat Challenge, MFC, Bodogfight, and NFF, winning against Cindy Romero, Julie Kedzie, Roxanne Modafferi, and Samantha Anderson, and losing to Amanda Buckner twice.

As a mixed martial artist, Shayna Baszler won the Freestyle Cage Fighting Women’s Bantamweight Grand Prix Championship on June 12, 2010.

She became The Cage Inc. Women's 140 lbs Champion on November 19, 2010.

As a professional wrestler, she clenched DDT Pro-Wrestling’s Ironman Heavymetalweight Championship on April 1, 2017.

She is the current holder of the AIW Women's Championship.

Baszler was ranked 12th on the Pro Wrestling Illustrated’s list of the top 50 female singles wrestlers in the PWI Female 50 in 2017.