AEW’s Renee Paquette was recently interviewed on “INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet.” She talked AEW, Jon Moxley, The Miz’s infamous Talking Smack promo, and more. Here are some highlights and scroll down for the entire interview.
Renee’s mom finding out who Jon Moxley was when Renee started dating him:
“She really doesn’t know anything about pro wrestling. She really doesn’t know anything about who Jon Moxley, or at the time, Dean Ambrose was. When I’m telling her I’m dating this guy and she starts looking him up Then she stumbles upon Jon Moxley, looking up his old promos and old matches. I remember she called me or texted me and was wary of him. She said, ‘I don’t know about this. He seems a little scary and mean’, and was rattling off all these other adjectives. I’m like, ‘Mom, it’s fine. Don’t sweat it.’”
“But now it’s so funny because my mom is so obsessed with Jon. My mom loves Jon more than she loves me. I can almost guarantee you that. My mom got a Mox tattoo. I did not see that in my bingo cards. It’s on her wrist. Jon wanted to get a new tattoo. My mom was staying with us to help me get my footing as a mom. So my mom’s with us in Vegas. Jon wanted to get a new tattoo. I’m like, ‘Shit, well I want to get a new tattoo.’ This was after a couple weeks I had Nora. My mom said, ‘Well I want a tattoo too. What am I gonna get?’ She was trying to figure it out and Jon jokingly said, ‘Why don’t you get my name or something like that?’ She said, ‘Okay, that’s great.’ He wrote his name and then she got it.”
Renee said she was not ready to do commentary when she did it for Monday Night RAW:
“I was not ready to do commentary. I wasn’t ready to do Raw commentary specifically, and that happens a lot. Adnan Virk was a great broadcaster, fantastic broadcaster. I think it’s like, well, let’s bring in somebody from the outside world, from outside sports that really knows that space, but he has never done it, and it’s really just not setting people up for success.”
“When I think of the training program like we had with doing NXT being in that phase, then you get called up, because it’s also very different doing a show at NXT versus doing Raw or SmackDown, the game completely changes once Vince is in your ear, once you’re doing a three hour long show. It’s just such a different dynamic. I think it’s just really putting people in and it’s a sink or swim mentality. It just sucks because most people end up sinking. It’s not for lack of talent or not being good at that position. It takes a really long time to become a great wrestling commentator. You can be a sports commentator and I think probably get better at that because you’re really just dealing with calling what you see and talking about facts. That’s not what we do as a wrestling commentator. Now you’re telling stories. You’re putting over the babyface. You’re talking about the heel. You’re talking about them in different ways. Sometimes there’s just like the different nuance, subtleties of things that are happening. So yeah, wrestling commentary is just so different from being a hockey commentator, a football commentator, whatever it may be.”
“Pat McAfee is such an anomaly. He’s so great at what he does, but he’s also a huge wrestling fan, so that of course helps. He’s just a huge personality. Michael Cole has been doing commentary for what, like 20 years or something? He’s so good. I could literally dedicate like an hour of this time to just talking about how good he is at what he does. I think now he finally does get the credit. Michael Cole is pretty great, like, he’s so fantastic. ”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription. Also, be sure to subscribe to “Insight with Chris Van Vliet” on your mobile device by clicking here if you have an iOS device or here on your Android device.
