Renee Paquette has discussed her feelings towards WWE since she left the company full-time at SummerSlam 2020 after spending eight years with the company.
Paquette, who was known as Renee Young in WWE spent most of those eight years working as a backstage interviewer. Paquette also took on hosting duties for pay-per-view Kick Off shows before being afforded the opportunity to join the commentary team on Raw. In doing so Paquette became the first full-time female commentator in WWE history.
Speaking on her Oral Sessions podcast with guest Ariel Helwani, Paquette was asked if she was still a fan of WWE or if she had been soured on the product.
Paquette responded:
“No, I love watching my friends do their thing. Any sourness that I would have, would definitely not be towards anybody that’s on camera, so I love being able to watch them all do their thing.”
“I did need a breather. It’s not like I sit there and watch all of Raw, or watch all of SmackDown. I always check, I get the news app on my phone, and check all the stuff on Twitter, I like staying in the know. It’s one of those things, I’ve already spent so much time and been so invested in it for so long, the idea of being like, ‘I don’t do that anymore’ seems dumb to me. It’s a thing that I do love, I love wrestling, so to be able to watch Raw, watch SmackDown, watch some NXT, watch AEW, I was just in LA with my husband doing stuff for New Japan, there’s no shortage of wrestling happening in this household.”
Helwani, who himself is a successful MMA journalist then asked Paquette if she felt any resentment towards WWE:
“I needed that little bit of a breather, of ‘Ok, I’m not so entrenched in it all the time and I’m not talking about it all the time’. This show and having interviews, I’m still very much wrapped up in the WWE world, but walking around being mad about things or wishing things went a different way, it’s just not how it went. For me to spend negative energy feeling a certain way about something is useless, it’s burdening nobody but myself so might as well drop it and move on.”
“I got so much greatness out of my time in WWE, from the opportunities I was afforded, the platform I was afforded, the success I was able to have there, that’s something I would never be able to turn my nose up at. I still had a great run there, and I kind of hit that ceiling which ultimately led to me wanting to leave.”
Renee Paquette did make a brief return to WWE in the lead-up to the Royal Rumble event in January. Paquette and co-hosts Booker T and Paige returned for a one-off edition of their WWE Backstage show.
Paquette is currently expecting her first child with AEW’s very own wild thing, Jon Moxley.