Renee Young made an appearance on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast to discuss her WWE departure as well as the way the company handled her revealing to the world through social media that she had tested positive for COVID-19.
Young explained that the reason she went public with the news came down her wanting to be transparent and responsible as a way to make sure that those around her at the time know about it as they could’ve been exposed.
“But yeah, it was not well received,” she said regarding how WWE handled it. After sending out the tweet and going to bed, she received several texts the following morning when she woke up.
“They weren’t even like ‘You shouldn’t have posted it.’ But it was like, ‘We really wish you gave us a heads up that you were going to post it.’ It was bad for PR and whatnot. But again, I wouldn’t have even thought to be like, “Hey guys, I’m gonna tweet that I have COVID, ha, ha. Like, that was just not what I was thinking about when I posted about it.”
Young was asked whether she thinks WWE should’ve shut down TV tapings early on when the pandemic started. She stated that she felt less concerned about it when she finished up at SummerSlam due to the company testing everyone for the virus. She thinks those protocols should have been implemented at the very beginning.
This is when she noted that she felt “a little slighted” as she “didn’t really feel like anyone was all that concerned that I got sick. That bothered me for sure.”
She recalled how she knew she had the virus quickly even though there was an initial negative test as her symptoms gradually increased. Young noted that she does still feel some of the aftereffects every now and again even though she doesn’t have the virus anymore.
Regarding her WWE departure, Young noted that there wasn’t one moment when she made the decision, but rather when she tested postive virus and FOX had canceled WWE Backstage on the same day, it made her look at what she was doing career-wise.
Thus, she realized there wasn’t anything to do in WWE to progress her career. Young first told Michael Cole about her decision and that company really didn’t try to convince her to stay.
Young also talked about the first week out of the WWE, her experience having COVID-19, and much more. You can listen to the entire interview by clicking on the player below:
