WWE Referee Reveals Advice Shawn Michaels Gave Her In NXT

Appearing on Table Talk #94, WWE referee Jessika Carr talked about her time working in NXT under Shawn Michaels. She explained the biggest piece of advice the WWE Hall of Famer ever gave to her.

"When I was in NXT, I would sit in the skull sessions with Shawn Michaels," Carr said. "And he said 'in order to be a home run hitter, you have to hit home runs.' So that's just my priority, to every time I go out there, hit a home run with whatever I'm given. If opportunities lead to other opportunities, great. But my focus and my goal is to go out there and be trusted with what I have, and do well with everything that I have."

Carr has since moved on from NXT, primarily working on the Smackdown brand since 2019. She was asked to give her thoughts on the NXT 2.0 relaunch, and overall, she's positive on the changes.

"It's great," Carr said. "I haven't watched a lot of it, between traveling and whatnot. A lot of people are skeptical for any type of change, but I think the change has been a positive thing. There's a lot of new faces, the concepts, the colors, the brightness, everything. And more people are getting experience and having those opportunities to shine. Big shout to ref Aja for reffing the NXT main event or the NXT Championship main event last night. That was awesome. I'm very excited for her, she's doing fantastic, and I know we have a bunch of new referees that just came in too. You'll see some new faces down there also. Over the summer, I did go back to NXT for probably a month or so. The biggest, the craziest was doing Summerslam and then getting on a plane and going straight to TakeOver to do the WALTER-Dragunov match. Physically I was there, mentally I was like, 'what is happening?!'"

Carr was originally trained as a wrestler before joining NXT as a referee. She explained her worries about the transition when she signed, as well as her relief that the WWE job afforded her some financial stability after she had been working as a waitress.

"I was a wrestler, so this was an opportunity as a referee," Carr said. "For one, it was a feeling of relief, because at the time, I was a waitress. I'm working and living off of tips, and having to pay for rent, not knowing if I'm going to make rent. This was finally a chance, an opportunity to get paid, to do what I love. But it was also so much uncertainty of 'what does this mean? Am I going to love reffing? Am I not going to love reffing? Am I going to do well? Am I not going to do well? Am I going to suck?' So it was so much uncertainty, but also so much excitement of 'what is this new venture going to hold for me?'

"It's been four years, it'll be five I think in May. And how quickly that time has gone. It's crazy, because you do this experience that I just had in Saudi, and it's already 'well, the machine keeps moving, so what's the next big thing?' And that's exciting too to think about. We just did this huge, awesome event, and there's just endless, massive, awesome events in the future to keep working for. There's going to be big matches in the future that I want to be in there for. So, I keep on working."