Renee Young Says She Never Felt Comfortable Doing Commentary On WWE Raw

Renee Young discusses her run on WWE commentary.

In August 2018, Renee Young made history by becoming the first-ever woman to join the WWE Raw commentary booth. The one-time fill-in turned into a permanent gig a month later as she replaced Jonathan Coachman as the full-time announcer. Unfortunately, despite initial fanfare, the gig didn’t exactly work out for Young as she faded into the background to Michael Cole and Corey Graves.

“I never felt comfortable doing that job,” Young revealed on the SI Media podcast. “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 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.”

Young was officially moved off the Raw commentary team in September 2019 when WWE split the Raw and SmackDown rosters with SmackDown moving to Fox. She is now the host of WWE Backstage on Fox Sports 1.

If you use any of the quotes above please credit SI Media podcast with a h/t to Fightful for the transcription.