If you're new to All Elite Wrestling (AEW), you're likely to become familiar with the stylings of Britt Baker - or to use her full title, Dr Britt Baker, DMD - rather quickly; the Pittsburgh native serving as a face of its women's division and, arguably, a pillar upon which the product has been built upon.
The first woman the promotion signed and a one-time women's champion, she's been a near-constant presence on television screens and live events ever since its inception, is the first woman you see on the introduction to its flagship show AEW Dynamite, and is frequently sent out in media duties to spread the word.
Presently, she's a key part of the saga that will see reigning AEW women's champion Jamie Hayter defend her title against Saraya (known from her days in the WWE as Paige) and Ruby Soho (Ruby Riot) at this weekend's AEW Revolution pay-per-view.
The morning after shows, though, when most of the fans that filed into the venue the night prior are still in bed and she'd likely much prefer to be sleeping off the bumps and bruises of the previous evening, she's on a flight, returning home for her other passion. For the Dr Britt Baker DMD catchline is far from a gimmick. The 31-year-old, a graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Dental Medicine, is quite possibly the only fully licenced and practising dentist in all of professional wrestling - apologies to Dr Isaac Yankem DDS.
"Any week where it's typically not a PPV... I'm on the first flight home Thursday morning, which is, unfortunately, a 5 am or a 6 am flight," Baker told ESPN, which now broadcasts AEW across Australia and New Zealand on ESPN and ESPN2.
"Then I change into my scrubs real quick and go straight back to the dental office. It's something that's getting a little harder and harder to manage because more and more fans are trying to trickle their way into the dental office.
"It's honestly just balance, it's finding the right balance to have two passions, two careers that you love and you want to keep doing because there's no reason to stop. If I don't have to choose one or the other, I don't want to. And I don't have to."
Born in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania (yes, that Punxsutawney), Baker began performing in 2014, where she juggled learning the very literal ropes of what it takes to become a professional wrestler in small promotions such as International Wrestling Cartel and Absolute Intense Wrestling alongside her dentistry studies.
Quickly building a reputation on professional wrestling's independent scene (which in the United States can effectively be categorised as every promotion that isn't AEW or WWE), Baker performed at the All Out pay-per-view that helped lay the foundations for AEW's birth and became the first woman announced by the company upon its birth in 2019.
"When I was on the independent scene, which was literally a week before I signed to AEW, I was wrestling in front of 200 people," she recalled. "Then weeks later, I was wrestling in front of 10,000 people and a million people on TV. Very quickly I've learned that this is a sink-or-swim environment.
"If you're someone that can't adapt to TV wrestling and you really can't cut a good promo, or you can't have a good TV match, they're not going to use you on TV wrestling. It's very different.
"You have to be strict and hard on yourself. Because ultimately, you want to be part of growing the product. You don't want to be the weak link. You don't want to be something that's bringing the product down. Early on, I had no TV experience. It was a weak link of mine. But I think I rose to the occasion and I took advantage of every single opportunity I had and tried to grow as a wrestler, as a promo, and as a character.
"And the more I put into it, the more confidence I gained. That's ultimately everything in professional wrestling, confidence. When you come out through the tunnel, if you're confident in yourself then people will believe in what you say or what you do. If you're not, they're not going to buy it."
Though her persona has recently started to turn, Baker has spent much of her four years in AEW as a 'heel' - a bad guy - portraying a brash, condescending, overly proud self-described "role model" who will often rely on her allies Hayter and Rebel to aid her to cheat to win matches. She will also incorporate her real-life dentistry skills into her character - her finishing move a combination of a scissored armbar and the mandible claw in which she uses her gloved hand to attack her opponent's mouth called 'The Lockjaw'.
However, transitioning one's character work and performances from what meshes with relatively small crowds in intimate venues to entertaining sometimes tens of thousands of people in arenas is no easy feat. Wrestling, at its core, is a form of, sometimes brutal, performance art - the image of Baker's bloody face during a match with Thunder Rosa became one of AEW's early defining images - with many different styles to master and requires intense practice and commitment to hone as a craft.
"Ultimately, you want to make sure that everyone is entertained," explained Baker. "You want to make sure the person on the other end of the camera is entertained but also the person that's up in the rafters in the very last row, that's still paid to buy a ticket to see you, you want them to be entertained too. So it's balanced.
"Something that helped me cater to the fans at home was the pandemic era. Because we didn't have fans in the audience and the only thing we had to pan to was the camera, was the red light that we saw on each camera that jumped as they were switching shots in the production truck.
"That helped me as a character because as a heel, I would find those camera shots and find ways to play to the camera and think what's the most annoying, miserable face I can make right now? What's going to piss these people off and get under their skin? And that's something that helps with your growth as a character."
For those on television, performing requires a complex mix of what is effectively executing a stunt show while simultaneously advancing a storyline, staying in character, keeping your fellow performers safe, and figuring out a way to keep those sitting live in attendance and the people watching at home entertained. All at the same time. Often while live on TV.
"We don't have a performance centre at AEW," explained Baker. "You have to be disciplined because you're [training] on your own and making sure that you're coming up with new stuff on your own.
"Everyone wants to stand out because these PPVs are stacked. Every week of TV - Dynamite and Rampage - the entire show is stacked. We have more talented professional wrestlers on the planet. And I stand by that.
"It comes down to, most of our roster are all professional wrestlers from the ground up. I'd say 99% of us started as independent wrestlers. It's our literal passion. We eat, sleep and breathe professional wrestling. Moreso than modelling or sports or anything else first. Not that there's anything wrong with that, the wrestlers that kind of fell into professional wrestling as a second career.
"But I just think that there's something different, the blood in us runs different, us indy wrestlers by heart. We all love training, it's what we did for free. We paid to train at one point. No one paid us. And we wrestled for a hotdog and a handshake at one point. And now that we get paid great money to put on a show we want it to be the best thing ever."
This counts especially so in the women's locker room for Baker, where she is part of a division that also includes the likes of Hayter, Saraya, Soho, TBS Champion Jade Cargill, Toni Storm, Hikaru Shida, Kris Statlander, Nyla Rose, and more.
"I think we all have a common denominator," she said. "We just love professional wrestling. As cliche as it sounds, everyone in there is very hard-headed and stubborn, in the best way possible, in that they want to do everything possible to put the best product out there.
"We want our fans to love to hate the bad guys and love the good guys. We want to pull that emotion out of the fans. We want the kid to be crying in the front row. So we all put our heads together to think how can we do this? How can we create the best bad guys and the best good guys and have the best storyline?
"I think right now the women's locker room is vibing the best it ever has as a whole, with everyone having a common goal."