Camp dove into his own experiences at the presser as a representative of WWE.
After WWE’s Premium Live Events, talents that competed on the show in addition to Chief Content Officer Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque take the stage to field questions from media members in attendance.
That was recently spotlighted coming out of the post-Backlash press conference when reporter Lucas Charpiot shared his experience on an episode of Pollock x Thurston here on POST Wrestling.
Matt Camp, who is a former WWE personality and host of The Bump, took to his Wrestling Matt Show to speak candidly about the post-PLE pressers. He brought up doing his first one while with WWE at Survivor Series 2022. Camp stated that a member of the company’s P.R. team knew he would not ask anything ‘crazy.’
Camp would state that WWE wants fans in the room for the pressers and for them to be part of the show and not want to ‘mess with’ that part of the show. He closed that portion of his comments by saying softball questions are wanted. He dove into his own experiences with members of the media. Camp added that he believes a better job could be done in regards to prepping Paul Levesque for questioning.
Let me tell you about WWE and a little insight because something that will definitely come up again, this weekend, whether it’d be because of King and Queen of the Ring or because of Double or Nothing, are these post-show press conferences and I know that these post-show press conferences have been quite the lightning rod of conversation. When they were brought back, and if I’m wrong on this, correct me but I think I’m right about this. When they were brought back for WarGames 2022, Survivor Series in Boston, I had done a show there. Kayla (Braxton) and I had done The Bump and Michael Cole called me and said, ‘Hey, if you’re still available –’ and I was — ‘can you go do the Kickoff?’ ‘Sure, I’m there’ and when I was there, I knew about the press conferences so I went to the Head of WWE Digital and I said, ‘Hey, I know you’re doing the press conference. I would like to be part of the press conference as media’ and I put ‘media’ in quotes because you guys know where I worked. I worked at WWE. I was state media and I said, ‘Listen, I just wanna cover the show as a credentialed press member.’ Obviously, none of that is that real or anything. It’s a scripted show, everything about it is scripted. They just wanted to have this post-show press conference. So, I said, ‘Can I just go in there and ask a question?’ ‘Sure,’ and I talked to a name who has come up in the wrestling world a lot more… I talked to Chris Legentil, who we know now, I think very important in WWE in P.R. and he kind of gave the heads up of, ‘Hey, you can do this. Yeah, 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 work there. Nothing crazy was going on at the time. Not like as it’s been the last few months where Triple H has fumbled and stumbled at some of these questions about the lawsuit or about Drew Gulak or anything like that. This was a pretty quiet time all things considered… Sami (Zayn) wins the match for Bloodline and all that stuff. I just wanted to ask about the show and I remember asking (Paul) Heyman a question and asking Sami a question. I’m sure you can go back and watch this footage… So I’m just asking a question. I wanted it to be part of something that we put on The Bump. We never end up putting any of this stuff on The Bump. Take that for what you will. But 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 of the media that was there, because you’re talking about, ‘Well how’d you feel about this?’ And there’s a gray area of kayfabe and what’s real and story and you were getting some real emotions out of people like Sami Zayn. Paul kept it very on the level but Paul’s always been very good at finding that gray area. Bringing that reality to a scripted (setting) and that’s how it started and I remember the media that was in there and I’ll tell you this, just to give you an idea of why I think we see the ‘media members’ get criticized is after I was done, one of the media members came up to me and asked for a picture. Happy to do so but I don’t think you’re giving off the right message to WWE or maybe you are because that’s exactly what they want. They want fans in there, they want people that want to be part of the show, 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 go, ‘We set all these –’ yeah, sure, that’s the real part. But they want this just to be an addendum to the end of the show, we wrap things up and we let people speak a little bit and show their excitement and for the most part, they want softballs, right? That’s why there have been criticism of some of these questions so I did that a few times. Probably five, six times. The Royal Rumble one last year where Cody (Rhodes) wins and he drinks the Mountain Dew and says, ‘That’s excellent’ because he’s a fantastic politician that way. We all laughed at that. At that very same press conference though… a pretty well-known sports entertainment, wrestling reporter is talking to Cody and literally plugs his website and the price of his website. Right there, I think your credibility goes out the window. WWE is gonna laugh at that and go, ah yeah, he’s just playing along. You don’t see someone at the end of the NBA playoffs when they’re doing press conferences plugging — they identify where they’re from but they’re not going, well, you know, it costs $9.99 to listen to what I do. No. I’ve heard people at press conferences for WWE, I’ve heard people at press conferences for AEW use their stage name or use their nickname. You’re killing your credibility doing that kind of stuff. Then you are playing into everything they want. Now listen, if WWE wants to have these press conferences and they’re going to invite press in — I was state media. I’m trying to ask good questions to create good content. I work there. I know other people went there for that and they would high five each other that they were covering it. There is a phrase that I’ve lived by for a very long time in my life, ‘Act as if. Act as if you’ve been there before.’ It’s from a movie called Boiler Room. It’s a great movie. But you have to present yourself in a certain way and if you’re gonna come in there talking about your nickname or trying to be buddy-buddy or making jokes, that’s not what the media does. If you wanna be taken seriously and if you wanna just be part of the show, you can be part of the show, because that’s what WWE wants when they get those questions at those shows. They want you to be part of it. They don’t want you to push. I think they could do a better job of prepping Triple H on these so he’s so he’s not saying, ‘Well I didn’t read the lawsuit’ or, ‘I don’t wanna talk — this guy’s not credible.’ He rips Fightful and he rips Mike Johnson for not being credible and then everybody’s getting cheese from Fairfield and Greenwich, Connecticut. If he’s prepped better, that stuff doesn’t happen.
As of this writing, a post-show presser for the upcoming King and Queen of the Ring Premium Live Event in Saudi Arabia has not been announced.
The show is taking place on May 25th.
If the quote in this article is used, please credit The Wrestling Matt Show with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcription.
