Renee Young Admits She Never Felt Comfortable Working as a WWE Raw Commentator

Renee Young made history back in August 2018 when she joined Michael Cole and Corey Graves as the first female commentator for Monday Night Raw. A month later she was an official member of the commentary booth, and continued to work the role all the way up until late September 2019 when WWE reshuffled its commentary teams for both Raw and SmackDown. She now serves as the host for WWE Backstage alongside Booker T and pops up on SmackDown as a special contributor, which included her filling in for Cole and Graves this week due to their travel issues leaving Saudi Arabia.

Young appeared on the latest episode of the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast, where she admitted that she struggled with the commentator role and felt it “wasn’t working.”

“I never felt comfortable doing that job,” Young said. “It was a very stressful year, to be completely honest. You look in that situation,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 asideone week and said, ‘You’re going to do commentary on Raw.’ I was like, ‘What? Why? Who approved this? Whose was 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 the background I come from, I’m a host, and I like to have more of a bubbly personality and that was what fans have been a little bit more drawn to. Or my sarcastic side, I can be a smartass. 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 get to drive the ship. So to have Cole and Graves there be in there rhthym and I’m trying to jump in there and everything has kinda everything already been said, it was odd. I tried to come at it from a fan standpoint, but then that doesn’t always work, that doesn’t always necessarily seem to be what they want you to be saying or doing. I just always felt a little misdirection about what my purpose was when I was out there.”

Young also mentioned the awkwardness of calling her husband Dean Ambrose’s (now Jon Moxley) matches.

“It wasn’t the right gig for me,” she later added

WWE Backstage is set to premiere its weekly program on Nov. 5 on Fox Sports 1.