Wrestling

Renee Paquette Originally Asked WWE To Release Her Five Years Ago, Why They Denied Her Request

on

During her interview with Ariel Helwani pro-wrestling personality and broadcaster Renee Paquette spoke about her time in WWE, and revealed that she originally asked to be released five years ago, but her request was denied. You can check out full highlights below.

Says she originally asked WWE to release her five years ago but the request was not granted:

“About five years ago, I asked for my release from WWE and I wasn’t granted it. It was before I did commentary and other things. I’m glad I didn’t leave at that point and that I wasn’t granted my release because my resume wouldn’t be what it is today if I had left during that point. For me, I still had stars in my eyes, and I still have stars in my eyes, about what I want to do with my career and I kept feeling like I was hitting a wall and being told that I cannot be a star within this company because it’s not about me, and I get that because I’m a broadcaster and personality, not the wrestler. I understand. I’m not putting asses in seats, I’m not selling merch, I’m not selling tickets, I get it. That was sort of the thing that felt stunting in my career because I felt like I had more to offer and more that I wanted to do. Yes, I was given an amazing platform, but I do see where the ceiling is at and I see me for me outside of this. If you guys don’t see that…it’s not that they didn’t see, the opportunities just weren’t there. With the Network starting and the different versions from when it first started to being all interview shows to then all documentaries, they were really going through growth spurts of figuring out what the Network was and I couldn’t quite find a place where I wanted to land within that. Then moving over to FOX and being able to do Backstage, that was something that scratched a bit of an itch. ‘I like doing this,’ I liked working in the studio setting, I liked working with FOX and had such a great experience there, but that came to an end as well with COVID shutting its doors on everything.”

How the pandemic provided her another opportunity to “get off the ride” and ask for her release again:

“I asked for my release several years ago, was not granted it, got to do a bunch of other things, and on the second time I was like, ‘Okay, now it’s really time to get off the ride.’ That’s the reference I come back to, getting off the ride. It’s hard to find a time to leave WWE. There’s never a perfect time,” Paquette said. “It just goes so fast. The fact that I was there for eight years makes my head spin, but it’s like ‘next show, next show, next pay-per-view, building to Mania, building to SummerSlam, this is coming up, this new opportunity,’ there’s never that time to get your foot out the other door. With my time at commentary ending, the FOX show ended, and with COVID, we’re in the middle of COVID, and I was like, ‘This is my time. I see this window and it’s my time to jump off the ride and figure it out, which is a weird time to do that because everything else was shut down so it was ‘oh shit, I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m getting off this ride.’”

How she knew she had more to offer:

“I was just unhappy in the sense of knowing that I had more to offer. I was just doing backstage interviews. I was still doing kick-off shows, but on the day-to-day, the schedule was just backstage interviews, which I actually loved doing cause it felt more to me getting to flex a little of that acting muscle and I always loved that. I loved being able to have the subtle reaction to the heel or the babyface and being able to help those storylines any way I could, but there wasn’t that other thing to sink my teeth into. There would be times where I would sit there, and I wasn’t on the show, there was no backstage interview. I would sit there, waiting for something to do and I started to feel like I was really wasting time and wasting important years of my career. Even if I was doing something on the show, it was a quick ‘Hey, welcome my guest….’ they cut me off, I’m staring off into the abyss for the camera cut. As much as I loved doing that, I know there was more that I had to offer and other things I wanted to do. It was just trying to find that right thing to do. I spoke to Kevin Dunn, I asked him for my release, and he said ‘No.’ I was like, ‘Wait, you can say no?’ I wasn’t expecting that. He was like, ‘We have other plans for you and we have things we want to do,’ I’m glad the doors didn’t close and we didn’t end our relationship at that point because there was stuff for me to do. By the time I jumped off commentary and the FOX show ended, it was time to go.”

Says she gave her two weeks once her contract listed her as an employee and not a talent:

“This time around, it was a different situation and I was under a different contract. I was an employee, so I gave my two weeks notice. Much different. It put me in a better spot to be like, ‘Now I can end it, we are ending it, it is what it is.’ I can’t speak for them, but the way I feel is, we’re not meeting each other on the same playing field.”

(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)

You must be logged in to post a comment Login