Beth Phoenix was a member of the WWE NXT commentary team before leaving in December 2021 to spend more time with her family.
This was after she had stopped competing as a full-time wrestler. She discussed her decision to stop doing commentary with John Bradshaw Layfield (JBL) and Gerald Brisco on their podcast Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw.
She stated, “Oh man, that was one of the toughest things I’ve ever done in my life (transitioning to NXT commentary). Mainly because I was not known as being a good talker in my wrestling career and it was kind of something that terrified, it intimidated me and I just never thought that would be something I would be asked to do, number one, and number two, I didn’t have confidence in myself at all and I struggled hard. I struggled hard in the beginning. I had wonderful partners that were elevating me and helping me and Michael Cole was helping me, Tom (Hannifan) was helping me, Nigel (McGuinness), Mauro (Ranallo). Everybody was working to fill the gaps for me but it took a long time to really kind of figure out what the job actually is and then I also learned as I went to, one of the challenges, which I felt I transitioned well on is I’d been on commentary as a wrestler and all you have to do is talk about yourself and your own story which is easy, right? But being a commentator, you gotta know everybody’s story, you gotta have backstories and you have to bring forward and highlight everybody on the show. So it becomes a really kind of selfless job. You can no longer have that big, it’s all about me ego. You gotta start to realize I’m a part of building this entire brand and helping build these characters and so you have to be able to put on a different hat in that role and then the other thing is, it took a long time for me to, number one, get used to the traffic in the ears. There’s so many people talking at the same time but also, really trying to figure out a way to put someone else’s vision in my own words… We know, okay, here’s the story that has come forth or here’s where we have to go so we as commentators have to bring forward these stories that are written in creative but also not give anything away and use our own voice so it was just so many things going on and I think some wrestlers are cut out for it and some, like myself, it takes a lot longer.”
You can check out the complete interview below:
