Roman Reigns & Stephanie McMahon Ridicule Vince McMahon WWE Rule

It’s common knowledge to WWE fans that, under the Vince McMahon regime, there was a list of things that talent were banned from saying or doing on-screen.

However, since McMahon took a step back from the company in 2022 and handed the creative reigns over to Triple H, we have seen these rules loosened and more of the creep into weekly television.

But on Stephanie McMahon’s new podcast, What’s Your Story, current WWE Superstar Roman Reigns and McMahon ridiculed these rules, and revealed some terms that were banned in the McMahon era of the WWE.

Roman Reigns & Stephanie McMahon on Banned WWE Terms

Roman Reigns was talking about his time in American Football, which he played for three years at Oensacola Catholic High School and Escambia High School for a total of four years, before being un-drafted in the 2007 NFL Draft and being released by the Minnesota Vikings and Jacksonville Jaguars, moving to the Canadian Football League for a year before retiring from the sport altogether to pursue wrestling.

Reigns was talking to Stephanie McMahon about how his football coach had influenced him early on in his career, before using the term “violent” to talk about professional wrestling. Stephanie quickly joked, saying that the word violent wasn’t allowed, before the two rattled off a list of old WWE banned phrases.

You can see the full interaction here:

The two joke about how the terms used by the McMahon regime were similar to the words that were banned, such as abducted and kidnapped, and hospital and local medical facility. This list from WrestleTalk shows the full list of banned words in WWE at the time.

Words Vince McMahon Banned From WWE

• Belt
• Our Industry
• Pro Wrestling
• Pro Wrestler
• The Title is on the Line
• House Show
• Title Shot (It’s An Opportunity)
• Strap
• Performance
• Hospital
• Sports Entertainment
• Title Changing Hands
• Faction
• Talent
• Performer
• Title Match
• War
• Interesting
• The Business
• Feud
• Fans
• Crazy

Some of these seem insane to ban, especially for a professional wrestling company, but times have now changed and a lot of these words are now being used on weekly television. CM Punk highlighted this change during the Backlash 2024 pre-show, when Big E was talking about the Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa) in New Japan Pro Wrestling.

Punk gave a shocked look and said: “I didn’t know where we existed because sometimes I’m still, you know, 10 years ago, and I’m like woah.”

It shows that times have changed for the better in WWE, and talent have more freedom about the words that they can use on screen.