WWE referees for better or for worse don’t have much of an identity. Unless the company wants us to remember a name for the sake of a story line, most referees are fairly anonymous outside some now well known faces. It wasn’t always this way, as at one point their names and the knowledge of them were fairly commonplace. Perhaps they became too common.
On his 83 Weeks Podcast with Conrad Thompson, Mike Chioda discusses what convinced Vince McMahon to declare that referees weren’t to have their names referenced on television anymore.
“It was one night at TV on a RAW show. Vince kept hearing the referees’ name and he didn’t know who that referee was. I don’t want to say his name but he just didn’t recognize the referee at all. He heard the announcers saying the referees’ names too many times. He had a fit right there and said, ‘I don’t want to hear anymore referees names on TV at all. Do not mention their names anymore.’ Ever since that night, they stopped announcing the referees’ names. He thought the referees’ names took up too much time on the broadcast show.”
Referees still get referenced, but probably nowhere near as often as they once were unless as stated earlier, they want you to remember that name because it will be important for a story line later. However, Chioda comes from a time where his name was mentioned frequently, along with Tim White, Charles Robinson, Nick Patrick, and many others.
(h/t to Wrestling News for the quote.)
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