Renee Young “Never Felt Comfortable” Doing Raw Commentary

WWE Backstage host Renee Young has opened up on what it was like commentating WWE Raw alongside Michael Cole and Corey Graves.

Young, who was the first ever full-time female commentator in WWE, spoke with Sports Illustrated regarding the role, saying:

“I never felt comfortable doing that job.

“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 Young replaced Jonathan Coachman on the commentary team in September last year, and had that role until the most recent WWE Draft.

The host of WWE Backstage 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.”

Thanks to Fightful for the transcriptions