Unsurprisingly, Vince McMahon’s name is not allowed to be spoken on WWE programming.
On January 25th, Vince McMahon was accused of sex trafficking and multiple instances of sexual misconduct by former WWE employee Janel Grant. The disturbing allegations led to McMahon ultimately resigning from his role as Chairman of the Board while denying all allegations.
Following the departure, WWE and parent company TKO Holdings have done everything within their power to erase McMahon from history. This has included but is not limited to McMahon’s profiles being removed from company websites along with no longer making any references in promos or commentary. However, McMahon was alluded to in a promo on the March 25th episode of Raw when CM Punk asked Drew McIntyre who hailed him as The Chosen One.
Discussing the segment on Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer explained that the segment was not heavily scripted and there were some apprehensions when McMahon was referenced as he is not allowed to be mentioned:
“The gist of the segment, it was not scripted word for word, which most things on that show are. They let the guys have free reign. There was one moment where there were a lot of people thinking this might not be a good idea, which was the Vince McMahon reference. One of the things is that Vince McMahon’s name is not allowed to be mentioned on TV, but McIntyre changed focused and never mentioned the name and they got out of it.
They went a little long but there was no negativity from it. One person told me that Levesque knew they were probably gonna go long throwing those guys out there like that. So the matches that didn’t have entrances, they had them during the commerical break. Before the show they already planned that that was gonna be the case. So it wasn’t that they came up with that to save time. They knew they would have to save time.”
Backstage Reaction To Vince McMahon Reference
With the segment being unscripted, the reference to the disgraced former Chairman caught many off guard backstage as it was a line that no one expected to be uttered in light of the events that took place in January. The day after Raw, a new report gave insight into how company officials reacted to CM Punk referencing Vince McMahon.
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