Emma Paton recalls how WWE legend gave her big break: "He introduced himself and said: ‘I might have an exclusive for you’"

At the 2024 World Matchplay last week, Emma Paton was again the face of Sky Sports' coverage, presenting the action alongside familiar darting faces such as Wayne Mardle, Mark Webster, Glen Durrant and John Part. The story of how Paton found herself in the Sky studio curiously owes a lot to a 9-time WWE champion.

“Obviously I was trying hard to present six or seven years ago," begins Paton's tale on the latest episode of William Hill's Club 501 podcast with Wayne Mardle. “This was before I made any breakthrough with darts. I was working in production, behind the camera. I was trying to find opportunities to gain experience as a presenter. In the end one of my colleagues worked on WWE and said ‘we do podcasts if you ever want to come and shadow or watch, let me know’."

That one trip to the wrestling, turned out to be a very big day in Paton's career. “An event came up at the Royal Albert Hall for a press day and then the event in the evening," she recalls. "My colleague told me to ask a question. I put my hand up and they brought a mic over and I asked about the growth of women’s wrestling and Triple H gave this really long answer. The press conference wrapped up and he’s walking out with his entourage and comes over to me and introduces himself. He says ‘I might have an exclusive for you’."

“A month later and my colleague gets an email from his PA and said ‘we want to give you this exclusive as mentioned. There will be this all women’s pay-per-view which has never been done before. Triple H and Stephanie McMahon would like to invite Emma over to New York to cover the event for Sky Sports'," Paton continues. "I’d been at Sky for seven or eight years. The Triple H thing maybe gave me confidence as well. Really random.”

Neither darts or wrestling were Paton's first sporting love though, with her also an accomplished athlete in her youth. “I was reasonably fit. I’d run a cross country and wouldn’t give up. That led me to athletics. People were like ‘you’re quick, you’re fit, you should go down to a track’. So I ended up doing that and representing my county and country," she recalls. “400 metres was what I got to. I wish I had come to the sport earlier, maybe 200 would have been my event. Actually 800... that was what I represented. It was horrific, it was horrible. I’d run like the first lap quick and then I’d die! So I settled on 400 which was brutal. The training was awful but I loved it, that’s what I enjoy the most. I enjoyed that more than the competing."

Football is also another passion of Paton. “After Loughborough I did a Masters in sports journalism. I just applied for jobs. I applied for a job writing for the Sky Sports app and website SkySports.com, writing news stories, features. Football is my first love and what I’d always watched as a kid. That is engrained really," concludes the Manchester United fan.