Kris Statlander Says Squatting Renee Paquette During Her Promo Was Their Second Take

On the August 4 episode of AEW Rampage, Kris Statlander hyped her upcoming match against Mercedes Martinez by cutting a promo. 

She also happened to be squatting Renee Paquette during the promo. 

Speaking to Alicia Atout, Statlander discussed how the promo came about. 

“I mean, I had no idea what I was going to do because I was just told to talk about the upcoming match with Mercedes Martinez on Collision the next day,” she said. “I feel like I try to be a very serious person when I have my promise, and that’s just not who I am. Anyone that knows me knows that it’s just not right unless it’s super genuine and just wasn’t one of those promos that needed to be like, ‘This is my whole world, my whole life.’ I just needed to do something different and do something that was more me. Obviously, I asked Renee, I said, ‘Hey, what do you think about this?’ and she was like, ‘Alright, let’s do it.’ That was our second take of that promo. We just had to make sure… so I was very tired. I was very, very tired during that second take, but somehow I got through it, and the people went nuts over it. Everyone loved it. I was like, ‘Alright, I guess I just have to squat everyone that’s interviewing me from now on.'”

Asked how she was able to keep a straight face during the promo, Statlander replied, “I don’t know. Everyone knows that I did not grow up watching wrestling,” she said. “I don’t have a great wrestling historian-type brain, but I know that the people that were helping film it and helped me find out what to say with it, they were like, ‘That was a very ’80s-style wrestling promo. It was one of their favorite promos. That’s why it felt like easy to do, because it’s like, all those big crazy characters that you’ve seen, like Randy Savage and Hogan promos, and stuff like that. It felt like I was almost just doing that. I was like, ‘Why haven’t I been doing this the whole time? This is so much easier.’ I guess I just channeled wrestling history that day, I don’t know. Sometimes you just go with it. It just worked so well.”

Statlander would go on to successfully defend her AEW TBS Championship against Martinez on the August 5 episode of AEW Collision. 

One week later, Statlander & Willow Nightingale teamed up, losing to Diamante & Martinez. 

Fans can find past results from AEW Collision at Fightful’s results section. 

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