Since their inception, pro wrestling press conferences has been a hot-button issue amongst fans and one former WWE employee stated what his ex-company’s intent is with having them after major PLEs.
Matt Camp, former host of The Bump, started a new daily wrestling news series titled The Wrestling Matt and kicked off his debut episode by talking about those press conferences. Camp was actually a media member of WWE’s first presser after Survivor Series 2022 in Boston. Camp made clear that he was a WWE employee at the time, but did ask to be apart of the media scrum. He asked questions to several names, including Paul Heyman, but did say there’s a matter of intent with WWE at utilizing the press conferences.:
“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 … 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?” (h/t Andrew Thompson)
Camp noted that WWE does get some “fans” presented as media in the press conferences, noting that one member member asked him for a photo after the event was over. He also said there are a contingency of media people there to get themselves over.
“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.”
Matt Camp was released from WWE in February 2014. He’d been with the company since 2019. WWE sources were surprised by the departure.