Renee Young Discusses Her Time On Commentary: “It Just Wasn’t Really Working”

WWE Backstage host, Renee Young, recently spoke with the SI Media Podcast where she spoke about her time on commentary and how she wasn’t comfortable.

While Young returned to the commentary booth for the latest episode of Friday Night SmackDown, that was only done due to the situation in Saudi Arabia, with Young’s main role with the company now being through WWE Backstage.

“I never felt comfortable doing that job,” Young revealed on the SI Media podcast. “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.”

Renee continued, “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.”

H/T to Fightful.com for the transcriptions.