Renee Paquette Explains Why She Chose AEW Over WWE

When Renee Paquette signed with AEW last month, she had not been affiliated with a wrestling promotion after leaving WWE in 2020. In an interview on "Excuse Me: The Vickie Guerrero Show," Paquette said her decision not to return to WWE was the right move, both professionally and personally.

"I feel in my time away from WWE — creating my own podcast, creating a human being and doing all these things in the last two years — I've been putting my own puzzle together," she said. "And it's like I just had one other piece that I was waiting to click right into place. And I feel like that's what happened once I once I signed with AEW."

Paquette acknowledged that she had been in conversations with WWE regarding a potential return, but decided to become "a part of this company that is growing and developing. I really want to help ... and I want to do a good job."

Being in the same company with her husband, Jon Moxley, also helped to shape her decision, and Paquette recalled having "family conversations about what makes the most sense for everybody." 

Since becoming part of the AEW team last month, Paquette said she enjoyed more spontaneity in her work "rather than just being handed a piece of paper" with clearly defined instructions, adding that she experienced a similar sense of restrictiveness in her "WWE Backstage" show on Fox Sports 1, which debuted in October 2019 but was cancelled in March 2020 at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"You kind of go through the motions, and then all of a sudden it just feels like you're kind of like swimming upstream a little bit too much," she said.