Britt Baker On Who Inspired Her Heel Character, How Jim Ross "Screwed" Her Babyface Run
Dr. Britt Baker appeared on Sunday Night's Main Event with Jason Agnew to talk of her current heel run and its success despite 2020 being such an odd year.
Baker, as everyone knows, is both a professional wrestler and a dentist. She was the first woman to sign with AEW and debuted on their pay-per-view, Double or Nothing, in May of 2019 by defeating Nyla Rose, Kylie Rae, and Awesome Kong. For a while, it had looked as though the AEW women's division would be built around Baker and her baby-face character. However, not long after AEW Dynamite finally aired on television, she was quickly receiving boos from the audience.
"I blame J.R. With full blown respect to J.R., [but] he really screwed me. Every single frickin' episode of Dynamite he mentioned I was a dentist a hundred times. [It got] to the point it wasn't cool anymore," Baker said.
Thankfully, AEW had the insight to turn Baker heel, which happened on the Jericho Cruise in January of 2020. She would berate Tony Schiavone after her victory over Priscilla Kelly. When asked whose idea it was for her to turn heel, the dentist revealed that it was indeed Kenny Omega who first approached her. She mentioned that he came up to her during training one day with the pitch, saying there weren't many heels in AEW at the moment and thought it would work.
"At that point in my wrestling career, I had never been a heel once. So just like my whole experience with AEW, I think I was just kinda thrown into the fire. Let's go, let's see if this works. And it did," she said.
Baker would go on to spend most of 2020 using what once was an angle of inspiration for a baby-face and twisting it to throw at the fans every chance given. Even though she suffered an injury and could not physically perform in-ring for most of the summer, Baker was still able to draw heat with her interviews with Tony Schiavone to great success. When asked who in the past had inspired her heel character the most, the dentist mentioned Chris Jericho's "conspiracy victim" and "role model" angles in WCW. Baker went on to show admiration for Jericho and his ability to continually evolve over the years.
"The way he's been able to change and elevate himself over and over after all these years is super inspiring," Baker said, "It's amazing, actually. He's a genius. He really is the G.O.A.T. and I'll always look to him for advice."
Dr. Britt Baker's new interview segment made its AEW Dynamite debut last Wednesday. Her guests that night were Cody Rhodes and Jade Cargill. Red Velvet also made an appearance, confronting Cargill on the behalf of Brandi Rhodes.
Baker is also scheduled to face Thunder Rosa on February 3rd, AEW Dynamite's Beach Break show.