Backstage Details On Banned Word List For Mickie James WWE Return

Backstage details have emerged on words that WWE announcers were banned from using during Mickie James’ Royal Rumble appearance.

Mickie James became the talk of the wrestling world ahead of WWE Royal Rumble, when WWE announced her for the bout, acknowledging the former WWE star as the current IMPACT Knockouts World Champion. Despite making her entrance with the title, James was referred to as the ‘IMPACT Women’s Champion’ during her January 29 return.

Per Will Washington on the Fightful Grapsody podcast, a WWE source told him that there were caveats to ‘literally everything’ surrounding James’ return. WWE announcers were reportedly not allowed to use the words ‘Knockout’ or ‘World’, which is why the championship was billed this way.

Also noting that WWE allowed announcers to say ‘IMPACT’ but not ‘IMPACT Wrestling’, Washington said:

“I talked to someone in WWE about the Mickie Stuff, and I was like it was really cool that they did all that, but they were like ‘yeah but there were caveats to literally everything that we had to do with Mickie James’. The first thing was ‘we were allowed to say IMPACT, but at no point were we allowed to say IMPACT Wrestling, it was a really important distinction; IMPACT Wrestling cannot be said, IMPACT Wrestling cannot be tagged on social media, you are not to say IMPACT Wrestling, solely IMPACT.

“The name of the company is IMPACT Wrestling, but it’s one of those ‘we (WWE) don’t say wrestling’, you don’t say wrestling, this company is not called IMPACT Wrestling’.

“The other thing was ‘we were told we do not use the term Knockout, we do not use the term World, even though the belt is called the IMPACT Knockouts World Championship, we do not use either of those words, and we were specifically on to refer to this belt as the IMPACT Women’s Championship’ despite the fact that that is not what it is called. So it wasn’t just free range that IMPACT gets this publicity, but that there was this specific nomenclature used.”

James was in the Rumble for almost 12 minutes, eliminating Michelle McCool, before she was thrown over the top rope by Lita. At Elimination Chamber, Lita will challenge for Becky Lynch’s Raw Women’s Championship.

Check out our list of Royal Rumble 2022 records and stats at this link.

Transcription via Cultaholic.

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• Banned
• mickie james
• IMPACT
• wwe

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