Brian “Road Dogg” James discusses working for Vince McMahon and Vince McMahon's affinity for banning certain terms.
Vince McMahon always had a certain preferred vocabulary and verbiage that he wanted to use on WWE television. At this point, longtime fans are familiar with the term “medical facility” as a replacement for “hospital” and Vince McMahon spent so many decades popularizing the term “sports entertainment,” that there are those who genuinely view sports entertainment as a different form of professional wrestling.
On the latest episode of his podcast, Road Dogg opens up about how Vince McMahon banning certain words forced him to expand his vocabulary.
“People always made fun of Vince banning words. For me, and this is straight from my heart and straight from my brain, he taught me a ton of words, and he extended my vocabulary," said Road Dogg. Because he would not let you say certain things. So you had to find other ways to say it and I think he thought there was a negative connotation against wrestling, and the wrestling world, and wrestlers. So he created World Wrestling Entertainment and has WWE Superstars, you know what I mean? There's nothing wrong with that. I think if it's your company, you can definitely call your people whatever you want. I think he thought it brought it up to a classier level. I don't disagree with him.
"I think it did exactly that," he continued. "The John Cenas of the world, The Rocks of the world. These guys have been accepted outside of the wrestling business because WWE is kind of bigger than wrestling. It will go back to being a wrestling company now and we'll see how that fares financially, whether it's prosperous, or not, only time will tell that but, that's up to the viewer. ‘Do I want to see a big huge guy that's marketable?’ Like, do I want to be with that guy If I'm a woman? Do I want to be that dude, if I'm a man, and if not, I don't know how marketable that guy is.”
Road Dogg then spoke about the reports that the terms ‘wrestler’ and ‘wrestling’ were no longer banned, saying that he understands the frustration But ultimately understood what Vince McMahon was doing by banning certain words.
“So I totally get where Vince is on the talent and on and on the banning of words,” Road Dogg continued. "Now you can say, ‘wrestler,’ okay? Do you know what I mean? Like, I don't understand, — I get it. There have been several times, believe me, I thought, ‘How frivolous is this? I can't say the stinkin’ word in his presence.’ Like, but in all actuality, looking back, I learned a ton of words. I learned what ‘abeyance’ meant because he wasn't going to say ‘held up.’ Sometimes, I actually think he loved it doing that because everybody would learn a new word.”
Most recently, Road Dogg revealed he was excited to get back to work with IMPACT Wrestling during their Emergence event. Read more about his excitement here.
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