Renee Paquette was recently interviewed by Ariel Helwani where she was asked if she remembered some times when Vince McMahon yelled into her headset during commentary.
It didn’t take long for Renee to reveal that she could easily identify some examples of this happening. She said “We were in Las Vegas and we’re doing a panel show where they cut to us during the show. It was some kind of special. Tyson Fury was on the show, when he was doing his stint in WWE, and it was me, Samoa Joe, Booker T and Beth Phoenix. And I was throwing to a package, ‘blah, blah, blah, something, something, the Gypsy King, Tyson Fury, throw to package.’ And he’s in my ear and he goes, ‘YOU F**KING RUINED IT!’ Screaming in my ear, telling me I ruined this segment because I didn’t refer to Tyson Fury as the lineal champion. So he’s screaming at me, and at this point, I am over it. I’ve done the commentary thing, I’m just like, I’m a little bit hardened to all the circumstances.”
Continuing on, Renee said “But he thinks I’m ignoring him, so he yells at me again, ‘DO YOU HEAR ME?! ACKNOWLEDGE THAT YOU HEAR ME!’ And he wanted me to look into the camera and be like, ‘yes sir, I hear you, I understand you. I apologize.’ But yeah, just to be yelled at like that for a small– I don’t even want to say mistake. I didn’t make a mistake, I just didn’t call him the lineal world champion. I didn’t know it was that necessary. It was if I had ruined the run of Tyson Fury in WWE by not calling him that. But to be yelled at like that in front of your peers was pretty demoralizing. To just be yelled at that I had ruined a segment, I felt bad about it.”
Renee said she remained emotionally strong after these outbursts and never cried or let it get to her mentally. She said “I can’t think of a time that I cried. There’s times that I had cried during my duration of WWE for sure, and we can get into those. But as far as being yelled at and being upset about that, not so much. It’s more so– it’s shocking. It’s like jarring to be yelled at like that as a grown ass woman.”
Ariel asked Renee if McMahon ever apologized to her for his behavior. Renee quickly shot that idea down by saying “God no. Not that I can remember. But that’s just not really the way that it works there. I do have regrets that I didn’t talk to him more about that, especially the Tyson Fury thing. That was one of just being screamed at that I really wish I had went to Gorilla. Because at that point, I knew I was like, ‘I’m out of here, man. This is crazy.’ I wish I had gone back and had a conversation with him about that a little bit more just to clarify.”
Thanks to Wrestling Inc. for providing transcriptions of the interview which you can see below.
