Renee Paquette joined Richard Deitsch on the Sports Media podcast to discuss her transition from WWE to AEW and her work producing video content for the Cincinnati Bengals:
“I am not that born and bred NFL die hard fan, but I will say since having moved to the United States, I’ve been here for about 10 years, I’ve navigated around. I started in New York, went out to Las Vegas, now we’re back in Cincinnati. I just never really had my team or like a reason to really sink my teeth into it. It was around this time last year, you know, add an extra little month there, but we moved to Cincinnati, and we’re like ‘Oh my God. Look at the Bengals go. This team is unbelievable.’ So it was a perfect time to really kind of jump on their bandwagon, and not just the Bengals bandwagon, but just like the NFL in general. It was perfect timing to become a Bengals fan and to to see the city, like they rally around the Bengals no matter what, but to be able to see them go so deep into the playoffs and make it to the Super Bowl, and now to see this like amazing hot streak that the team is on again right now, yeah, it’s it’s an absolute blast. The fact that I get to work with them now and get to do my show with them, ‘Rene All Day’, is insane to me.”
Why she went back to wrestling:
“I feel like in the last two years, so it’s been over two years now, since I’ve left WWE, and since I left WWE, you know, I was like planting these little seeds and kind of watering them and seeing what was going to grow, what needs a little love and all that between doing my podcast. You know, I feel like I do so many different jobs here and there, and it’s kept me very busy, and it’s been awesome. It’s been super fulfilling. But there was still that part of me, like, I just never felt like I really left the wrestling world. I left the world of WWE to a degree. I mean, I’m still friends with tons of people there. I’m still like, you know, I kind of keep my eye on what’s going on over there, but there’s something about being in the pro wrestling world that I don’t even think I realized how much I was missing it.”
“I still got to scratch that itch to a degree by doing my podcast, The Sessions, having on wrestlers getting to tell their stories and getting to feel like I was still getting that hangout experience of like hanging out backstage with people and just getting to see like what’s going on with their week, how their life is going, all that stuff. So to be able to bring that into podcast form was great, but I really missed the TV aspect.”
“I loved for the last two years while the world was turned upside down that I was able to stay busy and stay working and work from home. I have my daughter, like all those great things, but I’m a TV person. That’s where I got my start in the business. It is like my true love in terms of my work. The more I kind of was looking at it and just seeing what AEW is doing, what the opportunities were looking like there, realizing that really was a great landing place for me. My time in WWE, I gained such invaluable experience. There’s so many different things that I learned from being there that I think really set me up for my career and kind of whatever else was going to happen after WWE.”
“So now to be in AEW and have earned all of this information and experience, it’s really cool to be working for a company where I can truly utilize all of those skills, whether it’s me doing Interviews, who knows how shows are going to expand in the next little while. I would love for there to be some more kickoff shows, some stuff that I can truly host. I love doing interviews, I love getting to do that, but I think my bread and butter, my true skill, is hosting different shows and whatnot. So I really hope that’s something that I get to do with AEW down the line. Even to be able to help produce stuff, I don’t even think I realized how much I was able to really take in working with the best of the best to now being able to apply that in AEW. So yeah, being able to put on that producer hat is something that was a very nice shiny object to me, to be able to just kind of flex in that area a little bit, too. It’s been really cool.”
Renee discusses her AEW contract:
“I have a three-year deal with AEW. I have three years as talent and then also a three-year producer contact, so I have two different contracts.”
On whether she believes her role on TV will change from what we see on AEW:
“I would love for that role to evolve. You know, I think the thing with AEW, it is a wrestling company, and it is a match heavy show. It’s not necessarily as much about the broadcast in the way that WWE was. It’s more so about these great matches and showcasing talent in a different way. That being said, though, I mean, yeah, I love, like, I always say I love doing those interviews. I love doing backstage interviews. They’re really fun for me, especially when I can work with some younger talent that maybe has not been in that kind of situation before. I mean, there’s so many people that I’m dying to do proper sit down interviews with. I want to spend some real time with somebody and like, really unpeel some of those layers and figure out who some of these characters are to try to push some of those stories forward to give some context to fans who some of these wrestlers are. Even though some of these wrestlers are like these world renowned stars, if you’re a casual fan, you might not know who everybody is, and I would love to provide a little bit more context into who they are, and really get into that stuff. I obviously love doing that with my podcast. So to do that, on the television side is something that I would love to do.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
