Renee Paquette Gives Latest Update on Possibly Signing With AEW

Renee Paquette’s full interview with Chris Van Vliet dropped this week where the former WWE commentator discussed how she and Jon Moxley first started dating, her pregnancy and her life since departing from WWE back in August. She was also asked once again about the possibility of her joining Moxley on AEW programming, and while the Canadian broadcaster didn’t say “no” she did point out that she doesn’t want to “pigeonhole” her career by jumping from one wrestling company to another.

“You look at AEW and I think everything they’re doing is fantastic,” Paquette said (h/t Wrestling Inc.). “I’m not saying I wouldn’t do something there. I for sure would, if the right thing came up, but it’s not the thing that I’m chasing down.

“I think my time in WWE was so great and my time in wrestling has been so great, but I don’t want to have that be the only thing I do,” he added. “I don’t want to pigeonhole myself as just being the wrestling girl. I’ll always have that in my wheelhouse and have that be a thing that I lean on, but I think there are so many things that I want to do. That I think just going right into a wrestling company would sort of taking away from of my whole purpose of wanting to walk away.”

Paquette has explained in numerous interviews over the past few months that her reason for leaving WWE after eight years was that she felt there wasn’t anything left for her to accomplish following WWE Backstage‘s cancellation.

“I don’t know if there was a definitive ‘I’m leaving now’ [moment],” she said while on the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast back in September. “Backstage got canceled, I got COVID, a lot of s— just kind of happened… I’m at home, I get my diagnosis, that same day I found out that Backstage gets canceled. But it was really with Backstage being canceled that I was like, ‘What am I doing? I’m not really doing anything anymore and my skill set of being a host, there’s just nowhere for me to do it anymore. Even with Talking Smack coming back, I had heard the rumblings that Talking Smack was making its way back, I was planning on perhaps doing that. But I was like, ‘You know what? I feel like I’m taking steps backward. I’m sorta spinning my wheels to go back and do a show. To not be doing it with [Daniel Bryan.] To not be doing it with [former WWE producer and VP of Television Production] Mike Mansury, who also is no longer with WWE. But that was sort of the magic of what that show was to me.

“It was all that stuff happening at once and just being like, ‘What am I doing here? I’ve checked off all the things I’ve been able to do.’ Stepping away from commentary ultimately left kind of a bad taste in my mouth,” she continued. “So going to working for FOX was incredible, and I’ll still be doing stuff for FOX as we’re kind of figuring out what that looks like with WWE and FOX. But I’ll still be working with them on that side of things, so that’s cool. Just not really having any platforms with WWE and spinning my wheels, I’m turning 35. It’s kind of s— or get off the boat. It’s time to start making some other moves. Otherwise, I’m just going to stay here forever and not really be proud of my accomplishments anymore.”