Renee Paquette, formerly known as Renee Young, left WWE in 2020, but she made history during her time with the company. In 2018, she became the first woman to join the RAW broadcast team full-time. She later shifted gears and became the host of WWE Backstage, among other responsibilities, before she departed the company.
In a recent interview with Steve Fall of NBC Sports Boston, Paquette reflected on her experience as a commentator and noted that it was her least favorite part of her WWE career. She described how she enjoyed having the opportunity, but she prefers hosting shows because it allows her to be herself.
“The thing that I liked the least thing, I kinda hate to say this, but it’s true, it was doing the commentary,” said Paquette. “I just didn’t love doing it. I loved the opportunity of it, of course. It was such a huge opportunity. I’m so happy that I got to be someone to step in there to do that, that I got to make history, that I was afforded the opportunity to step in there to do that. I love that. But the actual job itself, I just didn’t love. I like hosting shows. I like being able to be myself and be a personality and I found that really difficult to do on commentary.”
Paquette went on to note that for her, it felt as if the WWE didn’t know exactly how to best utilize her, and because she was one of the first women doing commentary for the company, it often felt like they were just trying things and hoping they worked.
“You know, kind of being that first woman to step in there, figuring out what my role was in a three-man booth,” Paquette said. “I think for WWE, for the higher-ups as well, for them to figure out like hey, how do we want this to work? We’re not used to hearing a woman’s voice. What are we doing here, how can we make this work? So I think the first person to go in there to do that, you’re kind of throwing some stuff against the wall and hoping for the best. And I think that whoever comes after me that will do a great job, and that’s a thing that they want to do, they want to be a commentator, by all means. I hope they knock it out of the park. I thought Beth Phoenix did an amazing job with it.”
Paquette also explained how hosting the kickoff show was much different than handling play-by-play or color commentary during a wrestling match; being on a panel is more conversational, whereas commentary comes with plenty of distinct challenges.
“Hosting a kickoff show, that’s far more conversational,” said Paquette. “We get to hang out, we ask questions, we can react to things, we can just be like people hanging out enjoying wrestling, talking about it. But then doing commentary is like, you’re talking in sound bites. I literally changed the register of my voice so that I could try to blend in with the men, so that it wasn’t this higher-pitched voice kind of cutting in there. Trying to talk faster to get my points in there.
“Trying to, you have to emphasize moments when someone’s getting and you’ve gotta react instead of just talking. And they’re just very different things. I have an appreciation for all of them and I have a mega appreciation for people that do commentary, especially in the professional wrestling space because it’s a lot of moving parts. There’s so many little details and obviously you’ve got Vince in your ear, the show is changing. There’s so many different things happening.”
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