Kayla Braxton appeared on Ryan Satin’s “Out of Character” podcast. Here are a few highlights:
Kayla Braxton discusses her time on The Bump and the show’s future:
“I remember at the time I was kind of in a rut and that happens in any job. Every single week was the same. At that time, I was only just going to Friday Night Smackdown once a week. I was like, I need to do more. I need to always be doing something. So The Bump has completely revitalized me and my passion for not only WWE, but just for being an on air personality and to see how it’s been received by the fans and it continues to grow. We’re like three years in on this show. If you look at the history of shows like this in WWE, it’s not really a thing for us to see shows last this long and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. It went from like, ‘What is this Bump that I have to go to?’, and now it’s like them coming up to me and asking like, ‘Hey, when can I come on your show?’ So it’s awesome. I think it’s just going to keep growing.”
Kayla discussed her anxiety when WWE attempted to hire her as a ring announcer:
“I knew immediately (that it wasn’t for her). I was like, my voice doesn’t make those noises. Our ring announcers do not get enough credit. Samantha, who’s pretty new, got thrown into it. Holy cow, the pipes on that woman. It’s one of the most stressful jobs I think in this company, but no one gets it. They go out there and make it look easy, but that is not an easy job at all. My anxiety was through the roof every single time. You don’t know if your voice is going to crack. You have certain inflections on every person’s names. I mean, I think it’s by far, one of the top stressful jobs here.”
Working on Talking Smack with Paul Heyman:
“That was such a fun era of that show. I loved working with Paul. I didn’t know him well before we started doing that. I was like, who is this loud, obnoxious man that I have to sit next to who talks over me the whole time and just hijacks the show? Then after like a few weeks, I’m like, the mind of that man. He’s just such a brilliant human being and I can’t ever say enough good things about how much he’s helped me grow. I don’t think if I hosted that show with anybody else that I would have flourished as much as I think I had over the last couple of years. He gets it. He’s been around for forever. I hope we can do something again down the line because he was fun to work with.”
Kayla’s thoughts on Sami Zayn:
“Sami Zayn is the most entertaining character we have on television every single week. I tell him that he’s hilarious. Catch Smackdown this past Friday, his thing with the Usos and everything that he does. I watch him backstage getting ready for his stuff. I’ve never seen anyone, I mean, everyone is very passionate and does a lot of hard work, but Sami is just a whole different kind of breed of entertainer. You can tell how much he cares and he’s passionate. Doing interviews with him is so much fun because we can riff off of each other and figure out the way the audience will perceive it. That man is brilliant.”
You can listen to the complete podcast below:
