The idea was for Shafir and Duke to be hired guns.
Both Marina Shafir and Jessamyn Duke began their post-MMA ventures into pro wrestling under the WWE banner. Fast forward to present day and Marina is currently working independent dates and over the past several months, she has wrestled three times for All Elite Wrestling on their Dark program.
Throughout her years with NXT, Marina had a number of ideas and pitches she wanted to present to the powers that be, but explained to the All Real Wrestling Podcast that she stopped pitching ideas when she was told that there were plans in place for her.
I did [have ideas for storylines in WWE]. I didn’t — so, I did like a couple but then, they said that they had a plan for me and then I just kind of stopped and I shouldn’t have done that. You know, I took their word on something I shouldn’t have taken their word on and that’s on me. That’s not on anybody. That’s when I realized like when you’re in a business for yourself, you keep pumping that stuff out and that was a hard lesson to learn and I had — Jessamyn [Duke] had a lot of good ideas, I had a lot of really good ideas, Shayna [Baszler] had a lot of really good ideas but, you can’t do anything with those ideas until, you know, ‘The f*ck is going on?’ So there [were] just a whole bunch of good ideas for nothing.
She went on to speak about the idea that Jessamyn Duke came up with for them as a duo. Duke wanted to be hired guns of sorts and turn it into a business where talents could hire herself and Marina to ‘take care’ of people.
Initially, just keeping it as simple as, ‘Let’s start it off as like a fight club and bring in –’ this was all Jessamyn [Duke’s] initial idea of like, bringing in gambling. Like having us take care of people, like ‘take care’ of people. You know, just kind of making it into a little business mafia type-style and that’s where we would both really be able to utilize our characteristics. Like I’m a Maldivian assassin. Jess is a f*cking Kentucky gun. You know, that would have been fun to play off of. It’s more of like the idea of who we would be and then the storylines just kind of happen. I mean that’s how I feel like — to keep things organic, that’s just my opinion. I mean you don’t have to use this, it’s just — I just would try to keep it simple because I can’t — everybody makes them all very complicated and I just need it — give me the straightforward idea and then we can make it fun.
Shafir’s match against Reka Tehaka airs on tonight’s AEW Dark and that show is going to be reviewed here on POST Wrestling via ‘Shot In The Dark.’
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit the All Real Wrestling Podcast with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
