Renee Young became the first full-time female commentator in WWE in September 2018.
That gig lasted until last month when the WWE Draft occurred and Young was chosen to be the host of WWE Backstage on FS1.
Young recently spoke with Sports Illustrated Media Podcast about why she didn’t feel comfortable on commentary:
“I never felt comfortable doing that job. It was a very stressful year, to be completely honest. I’m here in WWE and the first female to come into [the backstage] role. I needed something else to chew on. Michael Cole and Triple H pulled me aside and said, ‘You’re going to do commentary on Raw.’ I was like, ‘What? Why? Who approved this?’ But, like with anything, I was gonna try to figure it out.”
“To go out there and call three hours of wrestling, coming from my role backstage, I like to have more of a bubbly personality and that was what fans have been drawn to. Or my sarcastic side. It’s hard to do that on commentary, especially when you’ve got [Corey Graves], who is great at that. But also stepping in there as a third person. I’m used to being the A person. I’m trying to jump in there and everything has kinda already been said. It was odd. I tried to come at it from a fan standpoint, but that doesn’t always work. I felt misdirection about what my purpose was when I was out there.”
“It was a cool feather to put in my cap. I’m not one to back away from something. I wanted it to be a thing to work and I wanted to excel at that. Not being good at something is a tough pill to swallow for me. It just wasn’t really working.”
WWE Backstage officially premieres on FS1 this Tuesday at 11pm ET.
H/T to Fightful for the transcription.
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