By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Jackie Redmond
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
On CM Punk’s return: “I crossed paths with CM Punk prior to joining WWE because he’s such a hockey fan. So I knew him through hockey. So when he came back, I instantly DM’d him. I was leaving the venue, and I was like, ‘You little shit! I didn’t know you were coming back.’ This is crazy, and I was still pretty new at that time. So for me, I was like, Oh my gosh. It’s an intimidating world. Everyone’s so nice and welcoming, but it’s a big world with big personalities. Everyone’s focused on what they have going on. So when I first started, I was very much in my shell, I was shy. So when Punk came back, I was like, Oh, my God, a friendly face. I know this person, which is so crazy because his reputation prior to coming back, it just amazes me some of the things that people say about him. Because for me, he’s always just been an absolute pleasure, so nice, so professional, just awesome.”
On how WWE originally brought her in: “So I was in Montreal covering the Stanley Cup final between Montreal and Tampa. I mean, this business is funny, right? Because years prior to this, because that would have been 2021. Around 2016, 2017, again, Renee Paquette calls me and is like, ‘Hey, WWE might be interested in you. What do you think? I told them I’d call you first just to see kind of what you think.’ And she’s been such a great person to me. I know we talked about her earlier, but whenever I’ve reached out to her for any type of advice, she’s always been there, even as the years have passed. So she had called me and told me that my name had been brought up, and asked me what I thought. I said, ‘Well, what is the gig?’ I was still in Toronto at this time, and just like, it would be hosting. She goes, ‘I see everything you’re doing in Canada right now with misplays of the month, and you’re hosting our equivalent to SportsCenter on the weekends. You’re doing all this great stuff. I feel like they might put you in NXT, you might be in the middle of nowhere.’
“Experience outside of WWE isn’t the same as experience inside of WWE. And she goes, ‘So I don’t know if you’d be into it.’ So I said, ‘You know what? Let me think about it.’ And at the same time, I got an opportunity at NHL Network, and so I ended up not doing the WWE thing, and it never went further than a convo with Renee on the phone. It was very much like early stages, like, ‘Hey, your name was mentioned by somebody.’ So I end up taking the hockey show. My dream job, right? I’m covering hockey two hours a day, live television. Best thing for me to ever happen as a broadcaster, because when you’re live for two hours straight, oh man, you make some mistakes, but you learn how to kind of roll with the punches.
“So years go by, and I’m covering the final in Montreal, and I am not even joking, I get a phone call. I don’t know the number. I pick it up, and it’s Michael Cole, and he’s like, ‘Hey, I know your agent. I got your contact info from your agent. We are looking for someone to host our post-shows, our Raw Talk and our Talking Smack, and we’re kind of changing them a little bit. We want them to be a little bit more like a real sports post-show, where you come into a studio, you talk about what happened. Maybe you go back to the venue, there’s an interview, yada yada yada.’ So I literally get a cold call from Michael Cole, which is so weird. I’m in Montreal, and I’m like, I can’t wait to text my sister after this and be like, ‘Michael Cole just called me. How weird is that?’ I guess my agent was supposed to give me a heads up, but didn’t get me the heads up in time that the call was coming.
“So I had been on their radar, and yeah, he called me, and I said, ‘Do I have to stop doing this hockey show that I’m doing?’ And he said, ‘Well, where’s the hockey show?’ And I said, it’s in New Jersey. He said, ‘Well, Connecticut’s 90-minute drive. It’s only twice a week, Mondays and Fridays. You do both. It’s fine with us if it’s fine with you.’ So I did the audition, and he called me pretty much after the audition, and said, ‘You got it, if you want it, it’s yours.’ Those were crazy days, because our show was four to six Eastern time. So on Monday, I’d be on the air four to six live, and then I would leave from NHL Network and drive right to Connecticut, get there basically, with the traffic and stuff right on time for Monday Night Raw to start, watch the show, and then go live again.”
On The Rock interrupted her interview with Triple H at the WrestleMania 40 press conference: “The jaw drop, the most natural crazy jaw drop of my entire life. The crazy thing about that situation was I didn’t even know I was interviewing Triple H until eight minutes before that. So we’re getting close to the end of this presser, and a producer comes up to me and is like, ‘Hey, we weren’t planning for this, but some shit is about to go down, and I think we need to hear from Hunter after this. We need him to give us something to kind of put a cap on everything that’s going on.’ So okay, that’s no problem. ‘So just pay attention. As soon as it’s done, he’s gonna come out of Gorilla, and he knows he’s gonna chat with you to get this instant live reaction from the craziness that just happened.’
“So I find that out late, and I’m like, oh. I’m still only a year into this job, maybe. So for me, Hunter is still a very intimidating presence. I’ve met him, I’ve talked to him. He’s lovely, but we’re not buds. I don’t know him that well. I’m like, Oh man, I’m interviewing Hunter, can’t blow this, this has to be good. And then I interview him, and I should know better at this point that basically 99 percent of the time when I’m interviewing someone, it will be interrupted, that’s pretty much a staple of what I do. But I had no idea that Dwayne ‘The Rock motherf—ing’ Johnson was gonna come out, yell at Hunter, and drop F bombs all on live television.
“People do not believe me to this day that I did not know The Rock was gonna do that. I did not know, hand to God, did not know that that was gonna happen. So when it did, that was a very real reaction from me. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I felt like I was teleported back to being 10 years old. It’s the Attitude Era, and The Rock and Triple H are yelling at each other. What is going on? It was a very surreal, surreal moment for me. I don’t say that a lot, like that was one where I was like is this my life right now?”
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