Renee Young on criticism of her commentary: “That stuff is going to affect me”
Renee Young spoke with Alicia Atout in a new interview discussing her making the adjustment to doing commentary, her tweet responding to criticism of her commentary work and more. Young took to Twitter in July to respond to a post criticizing her work on Raw and acknowledging she’s “not great” on commentary, but that she’s trying to get better every week.
Highlights from the discussion, and the full video, are below:
On her response to the tweet criticizing her commentary: “Yeah. You know, it’s funny because when it happened, I was like, ‘Do I respond to this? How do I feel about it?’ And the more I was mulling it over, just because I mean, I have my own insecurities with it anyways. So of course it’s like somebody’s picking at that scab. And you know, everybody’s like, ‘Don’t respond to people online, blah blah blah.’ But like, I’m human too. That stuff is going to affect me. But I was really surprised at how much me just being honest about it, how people reacted. I’m just so used to being flippant, or wanting to have like a sarcastic comment to somebody. So I think just actually talking from my heart really got to people. So that was really cool.”
On adjusting to the commentary position: “You know, when I first started out hosting, it didn’t really go anywhere. I had like shows I did on small cable networks, like no one really saw them. So I could figure my stuff out much earlier without people seeing it. But now, trying on this new hat of doing commentary, it’s like, I’m stepping [out] there doing commentary. I did it for a few months in NXT years ago. But prior to me filling in and taking over that role, like I wasn’t groomed for that spot. I wasn’t at NXT doing it, I wasn’t in the booth doing it. So I am learning this entirely new skill on Monday Night Raw. So it’s like, ‘Yeah, no pressure babe, go out there and crush it.’ So it’s cool. There’s good days, there’s bad days, and I’m always open to learning. I’m always open to criticisms. But I think sometimes you have to be careful on like, how often you take those criticisms. Because everybody — like, even if it’s good, even if I go backstage after Raw and you run into five, ten different people who want to have an opinion on it, you can’t take everybody’s opinions. You’ve gotta weed through that, and it’s just navigating those waters. But yeah, it’s nice to just sort of be honest with myself and be honest with other people. Because yeah man, I’m in a spot and trying to make the most of it.”
