Kayla Braxton has revealed that she wasn’t thrilled with the Paul Heyman pairing at first but she learned the genius of the former ECW owner as time went by.
The former WWE personality recently had an interview with Denise Salcedo. She talked about things such as her love for horror movies, the reason she left WWE, and more.
During the talk, Braxton was asked about her work with Heyman which was one of the highlights of her later run in WWE. Kayla revealed that she wasn’t a fan of the wise man when he first started appearing on Talking Smack with her:
“Yeah, probably one of the most—if not the most—brilliant mind in wrestling. Paul’s been around forever, for like many different leaderships and eras of wrestling. That really happened very organically back during the Thunderdome era, during the pandemic, when they put us together on Talking Smack.
So we had the panel show. I didn’t really know Paul, hadn’t worked with Paul that much at the time. I just knew that this really big, loud man was on my kickoff show all of a sudden, taking up all my airtime. I was getting really frustrated with him, but then the more I got to work with him…man, I would not have become the broadcaster I had become if it weren’t for Paul Heyman.”
Something Really Special: Kayla Braxton
Things changed once Paul Heyman started working his magic. Kayla Braxton mentioned how even before her time, Talking Smack was a destination for some big storyline developments. Her mini-feud with Heyman also made its way to SmackDown when Paul Heyman started doing his thing:
“From there, we’d create little mini storylines on the panel—which a lot of times, Talking Smack, things that would happen on there, even that the Renee Paquette, then Renee Young and Daniel Bryan – things would end up on TV at storylines. That’s kind of what inched our way into this whole Bloodline feud that I had.
And listen, there were a lot of times we’d be going live, I’d be handed a script of what to say in my interview. and Paul’s like ‘You don’t need that.’ I’m like ‘Yo we’re going live and I don’t know if I can just tell them in the truck hey, I’m not saying that’ But we would just go off the cuff, and anything Paul touched turned to gold. It was really fun. And that’s also something that’s really special. Not a lot of people can say that they got to work that closely with the wise man.”
Kayla Braxton left NXT for the main roster in April 2019. She was made host of Talking Smack in August 2020 and the show was renamed to SmackDown LowDown. She left the company in June this year.