Why WWE's Press Conferences Absolutely Suck

WWE's post-Premium Live Event press conferences - home of such cutting questions as "IYO SKY, do you want to wrestle Taylor Swift?" and, ostensibly, "Why are you so great?" - are seen as part of the show internally.

This is according to former WWE broadcaster Matt Camp on his show, The Wrestling Matt. Camp stated that despite being a WWE employee, he'd asked to be a credentialed media representative at the Survivor Series 2022 presser. In his words (h/t Fightful):

"I put media in quotes because you guys know where I worked, I worked in WWE. I said, ‘Listen, I just want to cover the show as a credentialed press member.’ Obviously, none of that is real or anything, it’s a scripted show, everything about it is scripted, they just wanted to have this post show press conference."

Chris Legentil, now WWE's head of PR, approved Camp's request as he knew Matt "wasn't gonna say anything crazy":

"I talked to Chris Legentil, who is now very important in WWE in PR. He kind of gave the heads up, ‘Hey, you can go ahead and do this. We’d love to have you ask a question.’ You know why, because I was a reliable person to ask a question. I wasn’t gonna say anything crazy, I worked there. Nothing crazy was going on at the time, not like as it’s been in the last few months where Triple H has fumbled and stumbled at some of these questions about a lawsuit or Drew Gulak."

Camp is referencing the post-Backlash 2024 press conference, where Lucas Charpiot asked Paul Levesque if Gulak's impending WWE departure was related to Ronda Rousey's accusations of misconduct against Drew. Rousey had alleged Gulak of grabbing the drawstrings of her sweatpants without consent, which Gulak denied. The question visibly rattled Levesque, who not only ignored the Gulak/Rousey part, but launched into a bizarre attack on Fightful and PWInsider, two of wrestling media's more reliable news sources.

Charpiot claimed that following this experience, a member of WWE's PR team told him that asking about Gulak's departure was "dumb."

Camp, a host of WWE's The Bump from 2019 until this February, stated:

"I wanted to just be part of the show, that’s all I looked at this as. It’s a press conference about something that is scripted. We’re gonna ask questions for the most part, for the media that was there, because you’re talking about how’d you feel about this. There’s a gray area of Kayfabe and what’s real and what’s story."

He then confirmed that the press conferences are "part of the show". WWE wants fans in the room, asking softball questions:

"They want fans in there. They want people that want to be part of the show and that don’t want to mess with their part of the show. The press conference is part of the show. Does Triple H come out at the end and [talk about] setting all these records, yeah sure, that’s the real part. But, they want this to just be an addendum. We wrap things up, we let people speak a little bit. For the most part, they want softballs, right? That’s why there has been criticism with some of these questions. I did that a few times, probably five or six times.”

Charpiot's appearance post-Backlash stood out as a rare example of a WWE press conference attendee asking a real, journalistic question of the company's Chief Content Officer. The promotion has frequently drawn criticism for its approach to these scrums, which rarely host anything but the softest of soft stances, furthering kayfabe and PR-driven narratives over real, impactful stories. This is despite WWE's apparent attempt at blurring the kayfabe/reality lines with the adoption of these post-PLE scrums.

If the press conferences are to be treated as part of the show, WWE must present them as such. It is totally reasonable for journalists like Charpiot to ask about such pressing matters as Gulak's WWE departure and the Rousey allegations in an environment facilitating questions from media members. It is less reasonable for Levesque to respond to these questions like a gotten-to child.

One cannot grant media members direct access to the Chief Content Officer of the world's biggest wrestling promotion, then get upset, presenting that the media member is in the wrong, when a tough question is asked.