After making a name for herself in professional wrestling on the biggest stage of them all, working through pretty much every role a non-wrestler can fill in WWE, Renee Paquette has found a second berth in AEW, where she largely fills a backstage interviewer role in addition to the occasional sit-down with stars like Britt Baker and Saraya and healthy side-hustle as the go-to interviewer of non-WWE talent on The Sessions.
So naturally, when Paquette ends up on the opposite side of the microphone, as the interviewer instead of the interviewee, she has plenty of interesting insight into all things professional wrestling, including the similarities and differences between AEW and WWE, a topic that came up in conversation with Chris Van Vliet.
“Yeah of course, I mean in terms of like wrestling is wrestling,” Renee Paquette noted Fightful. “Day of show is always a little bit crazy, ‘What’s happening, are things changing, is this what’s happening?’ That happens in both places for sure. There’s a fun energy, it’s a different energy and that’s something that took me a little bit to adjust to because I’m so used to… I was at WWE for eight years, so to know be in a similar environment to that, but it’s not the exact same environment as that, it’s cool to kind of like figure that out and figure out the ropes. It’s fun doing the backstage promos there. I think with WWE having their writers and having written promos for a majority of the people, that definitely serves a purpose and there is a benefit to that, but it’s fun to hop on the set and go ‘What are we saying? What are we doing? What do we need to try to accomplish here?’ Just trying to connect the dots to make the most sense of those promos, it’s a fun challenge. I like it.”
Paquette also noted her additional role of being able to help younger talent get their thoughts together for in-screen promos, even if she isn't involved in the segment.
“It’s cool to be able to have that input and to try to make sense of it,” Paquette added. “You’ve got two hours of TV time for Dynamite, an hour for Rampage, trying to get the proper storytelling in place for each show to make the most sense with usually a pretty small amount of time. If you’re given two minutes for a promo, that's a lot of time. When you have sixty seconds to try and accomplish [getting those points across], it’s really fun trying to figure out how to make it make sense.”
While some may wonder why AEW doesn't use Paquette more, it's clear she is enjoying her current role and is happy to still be involved in wrestling after nearly a decade in WWE.
Renee Paquette tells the story of her mother's Jon Moxley tattoo.
… wait, what? Yes, you read that headline correctly; Renee Paquette's mother has a Jon Moxley tattoo, and she explained how that came about to Van Vliet in their interview too.
“I’m on the road with WWE at the time of course and my mom doesn’t know what kind of life I’m really living,” Renee Paquette said via Fightful. “Of course I’m calling and checking in with her, but she doesn’t really know anything about pro wrestling. She really don’t know anything about who Jon Moxley and/or Dean Ambrose was. So when I’m telling her that I’m dating this guy, she starts looking him up and she stumbles upon Jon Moxley, looking up his old promos and matches. I remember she called me or texted me and was like so weary of him, she’s like ‘I don’t know about this, he seems really scary and a little mean.’ I was like ‘Mom, it’s fine, don’t sweat it.’
“Now it’s so funny because my mom is so obsessed with Jon, my mom loves Jon more than she loves me. I can almost guarantee you that. My mom got a Mox tattoo. I did not see that in my bingo cards. It’s on her wrist. So, we had kind have been joking around about it, after I had Nora, Jon really wanted to go get another tattoo and my mom was staying with us to help me get my footing as a mom. So my mom is with us in Vegas, Jon wants to go get a new tattoo and I’m like ‘Well, shit, I wanna get a new tattoo too.’ This was like a couple weeks after I had Nora and I wanted to get a tattoo for the baby. My mom is there and she gets big time fomos and [says that she] wants a tattoo too. She’s like ‘What am I gonna get, what am I gonna get?’ and she’s like trying to figure it out and Jon jokingly is like ‘Well, why don’t you get my name or something like that?’ and she was like ‘Okay, that’s great!’. My mom is very much so a call my bluff person, so yeah she got it. He just wrote his name, it’s really tiny. It’s actually kind of cute.”
Noted for her ability to get all sorts of interesting tidbits out of her interview subjects, it's pretty crazy that, in an interview with one of the top “media” personalities on the second-biggest wrestling promotion in the world, Van Vliet was able to get such a whimsical story out of “The Sessions” mouthpiece. Good on you, Van Vliet, and good on Mama Paquette for calling Renee's bluff and getting a Mox tattoo.
.@JonMoxley is back on a new episode of The Sessions baby!!
He’s telling us what went into creating his @aew Texas Death masterpiece with Hangman Adam Page. Listen to the episode anywhere you get your podcasts!! pic.twitter.com/knNNnWoETC
— Renee Paquette (@ReneePaquette) March 28, 2023
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