As noted, WWE broadcast team member Renee Young recently appeared as a guest on The Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast for an in-depth interview. Featured below are some of the highlights.
On her reaction to WWE cancelling “Talking Smack”: “I was really upset to lose Talking Smack. Also, working with [Daniel] Bryan was great. That was such an unknown thing for me when we got paired up to do that. It was mostly with Daniel Bryan, sometimes with Shane [McMahon], but working with Bryan, he is super talented at everything he does. Having him in that host role, who knew how incredible he would be at that? He was such a great co-host with that and also had that, ‘I don’t give a s**t’ attitude, which just made the show so much better. One of my strengths is reacting to some of the ridiculous things they would say and he is going off the rails and I would just egg him along. Being able to have stuff like having The Miz on there and having people create their own spotlights. Taking that situation and spinning it to where it was going to work for them. It was a fun collaborative process and allowing people to take that safety net away and see what they come up with. It was really cool. We were definitely bringing stuff along, creating new moments. Even at Raw 25, Miz would walk out and stare Bryan in the face, all of that stems from their Talking Smack.”
On hoping WWE brings back the show: “When Talking Smack ended I was pretty bummed up about that, but i do hope it comes back at some time. At least there is more kick off shows now, but I would like to bring a show like ‘Unfiltered’ back as well, something in that world. I am ready to find another thing to latch on to; I don’t know what it is yet, but I have a couple of ideas for some things, but I won’t tell you on here because I feel that they are really smart ideas.”
On how she was discovered by WWE: “I got brought in for WWE and was kind of wrapping up my stuff with The Score because I knew that I wanted to move down to the States and get some stuff happening. I went to ESPN the week prior and was auditioning for SportsNation and it was really great; it all went super well and I was like, okay, I guess that is what I am going to do now and I guess that is going to be my move, but obviously that was not the move and that was on a Monday; I believe on a Friday WWE called and said that we want to fly you down for an audition and I was like, ‘OK, cool.’ I had a really bad audition here; it was not good. I mean, it wasn’t awful, but it wasn’t good where I said that I knocked it out of the park, it wasn’t good. I was so stressed out because I went in, keep in mind that I thought for sure I was going to go work for ESPN and that it was going to happen, but thought that I was going to check out this WWE thing and see what happens. They made me do commentary, which is a very stressful thing to do commentary if you have never done it. I did my audition with Matt Striker, he was great to work with, but I think I just did color commentary; there’s no way I did play-by-play. They handed me a battery and told me to sell it to them, then I did this after show thing, which is more of my wheelhouse. When I started in WWE I had no idea what I was going to be doing, I thought it was going to be similar to what I was doing in Toronto, and it wasn’t for a long time coming in and doing backstage interviews and kind of getting the swing of that. Learning to what it is like to work for this company than just watching it. You have to learn to adapt to how you speak on certain things. I was learning a little on that because when I was working in Toronto they said that I wasn’t allowed to use this word or that word for branding reasons. So, I was getting a little bit of taste of that, but yeah, definitely an interesting journey.”
Check out the complete Renee Young interview from The Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast above or at YouTube.com.
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