Shawna Reed is looking toward the future.
As she soon approaches the ten-year anniversary of her professional wrestling career, Shawna Reed is keen on setting up the future of the business. During a recent interview with WrestleZone’s Ella Jay, the current BOTB Women’s Champion expressed her desire to transition from a competitor to a coach, once her in-ring career concludes.
“I’m gonna be honest. I’m 30 years old, so I know my window is closing, and I’m very aware of that I’m just going to keep wrestling till I believe my body is like ‘You have to stop.’ I did dabble in training a little bit, so I would love to be able to train people and help them grow.”
“… I think my real heart in it is training,” Reed continued. “I’ve kind of found that. And so hopefully maybe someday I get to maybe not open a training school, but maybe go to a training school and help train people. But I’m going to keep going until my body literally tells me I can’t go anymore, and we’ll see where that takes us.”
Learning The Fundamentals
When asked about the lessons she would instill into her hypothetical training students, Reed made it clear that fundamentals were key, first and foremost.
“First I would make sure they have the basics down. Basics are key, essential,” Reed said. “So many people nowadays and training schools are like, ‘Okay, sure. Lock up. Cool. Headlock takeover. Cool. Alright, get on the top, moonsault.’ Or a lot of the places now, people come in there and they’re like, ‘I don’t want to learn the basics. I just want to go do a 450. Could you teach me how to do that?'”
In addition to the in-ring basics, Reed is also intent on shaping the personas of her future students. Reed herself has undergone a drastic character change in her career, notably transforming from the “Pretty Little Psycho” into the “Daughter of a Thousand Maniacs.” Outside of the ring, though, Reed wants the next generation to maintain a sense of humbleness.
“I definitely would also talk about egos and try to instill in my students like don’t have one. Listen to your veterans. I’ve personally even had [situations where] I’ll try and give people advice and then they go and talk crap about me behind my back. But they say that in front of my friends and my friends tell me, so it gets around. If I could help not to make the same mistakes I did, then I would feel good.”
Check out our full interview with Shawna Reed below:
