10 Things You Can Get Fined For In WWE
Touching Vince McMahon? That's a paddlin'.
It's safe to say that we’ve seen some weird rulings laid down in WWE over the years.
Case in point, back at the turn of 1988, the company implemented a rule that outlawed Irish whips into the guardrail. And what’s worth noting is that the ban appeared to apply to Irish whips and Irish whips alone. So, hanging your opponent neck-first on the guardrail? Fine. Bashing their face over that very same railing? Great, go for it! But Irish Whipping your opponent into it? Apparently, that’s just a step too far.
That ruling has obviously since been reneged on, but there remain some fairly stickling laws in the company and many of them are accompanied by a fine of some sort.
Some may seem a tad unreasonable, others a little more understandable. Either way, these penalties are all taken rather seriously by the company hierarchy and cover all sorts of misdemeanours of varying severities, from fashion faux pas to excessive violence, right through to restrictions on fan interactions.
Here, we round up some of these fineable offences as well as instances of the punishments in action.
10. Blading
Blading, the totally normal act of using a tiny razor to slice open your own forehead, was once common practice in WWE. That all changed with the advent of the PG era in the mid-to-late 2000s when it became an offence that would be punished with a fine—as Batista learned the hard way back in 2008.
During a cage match with Chris Jericho on the 3 November 3 Raw, Batista allowed his “old school” frame of mind to get the better of him after being bashed over the head with a pipe for the finish. Naturally, a pipe to the head should be expected to cause some damage, and so Batista saw it fit to draw a little blood despite the recently-implemented ban.
Safe to say Vince McMahon wasn’t pleased. After an 18-second, expletive-riddled phone call, McMahon met with the guilty parties and dished out a $100,000 fine for Batista, as well as $5,000 penalties for Jericho, plus Dean Malenko and Mike Chioda—the match’s agent and referee.
Perhaps McMahon was still a little bitter about being stung with nine violations of Kentucky state law and having to pay around $50,000 in fines for blood-related misdemeanours at Backlash 2006.
Lesson learned, apparently.