Renee Young recently appeared on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast, where she discussed various topics. Young explained why she left WWE and described her frustrations with WWE Backstage. Here are some highlights:
On leaving WWE:
Young: “I don’t know that there was a definitive like, ‘I’m leaving now,’ you know. I think when [WWE[ Backstage got canceled, that was really the moment for me. Backstage got canceled, I got COVID, a lot of s— just kinda happened, you know, the COVID thing aside, that was just the icing on the cake. I’m at home, I get my diagnosis, that same day I find out that Backstage gets cancelled. But it was really with Backstage getting cancelled that I was like, what am I doing? Like I’m not really doing anything anymore, and my skill set of being a host, there’s just nowhere for me to do it anymore, you know? Even with Talking Smack coming back, and I had heard the rumblings that Talking Smack was making its way back, and I was planning on perhaps maybe doing that. But I was like you know what? I just feel like I’m taking steps backwards, I’m sort of spinning my wheels to go back and do a show, to not be doing it with [Daniel] Bryan to not be doing it with Mike Mansury, who’s also no longer with WWE, but that was sort of the magic of what that show was to me. I mean, it’s doing it’s own cool thing right now, kudos to Big E and Miz and Kayla Braxton with everything that they’ve been doing. But it was all that stuff kinda happening at once and just being like what am I doing here?”
“I’ve checked off all the things I’ve been able to do. Stepping away from doing commentary, which ultimately kind of left a bad taste in my mouth, so going and working for FOX was incredible, and I’ll still be doing stuff for FOX, as we’re kind of figuring out what that looks like with WWE and FOX, but I’m still gonna be working with them on that side of things, so that’s cool. Yeah, it was just not really having any platforms within WWE and just spinning my wheels, and I’m turning 35, it’s kinda s— or get off the boat, it’s time to start making some other moves. Otherwise, I’m just gonna stay here forever and not really be proud of my accomplishments anymore.”
On WWE Backstage not being what she wanted it to be:
Young: “I think it was just some more of the controversial stuff, I mean, you know, anytime you have [CM] Punk on the show too, it’s a little bit like, ‘Ooh, are we gonna say something that’s gonna upset people and ruffle the feathers,’ where not even that that’s the case of what we’re trying to do. But you’re trying to do a show where you can be authentic and talk about stuff. I mean, even if you want to bury something, so to speak, it would just feel like it was becoming a little bit sensitive to talk about things.”
“It felt like we just had to put everything over that was good or kinda skirt over stuff that was bad and have that omitted from the show.”
On her pitches for shaking up WWE’s broadcast presentation:
Young: “I actually really wanted them to use me the same way that UFC uses Megan Olivi, I think she has such a presence on their broadcast. I love the shots that they do of those walk-and-talks, people walking out during the entrances, standing up on the side of the octagon. That was something that I thought would be really, really cool.”
“Or one of the other pitches was just basically making me the host of SmackDown, I open the show, I welcome everybody, toss to stuff, that was another option that we’d been kind of floating around.”
The full podcast is available here:
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