Roman Reigns Comments On "Old WWE" Under Vince McMahon (WWE News)
OTC Roman Reigns remembers what life was like in WWE under McMahon's watch.
Roman Reigns chuckled during an appearance on Stephanie McMahon's 'What's Your Story?' podcast as he reminisced about the very specific language disgraced former WWE kingpin Vince McMahon would insist talent, announcers and staff used on screen. Infamously, Vince wanted pro wrestling to be called "sports entertainment" instead, but that was just the tip of the iceberg.
Of course, the "sports entertainment" tag has stuck, but Triple H apparently isn't so fussed about using some of the same vernacular his father in law demanded. Some phrasing, like "WWE Universe" and "WWE Superstar" has stuck around, but there's free use of wrestling, wrestler and even the word fans on company programming in 2025.
That'd likely cause Vince to have a conniption fit if he was tuning in.
During the pod with Stephanie, Reigns also remarked that her father disliked when people would refer to WWE as "violent". He wanted the word "aggressive" used instead, which does explain the old "Ruthless Aggression" branding that followed on from "Attitude" in the early-2000s.
Roman described this as "the old WWE", and said the output is "violent as hell". It is, naturally. He's right. Wrestling is simulated combat sport, which is violent. There's no better way to describe it, so Vince was splitting hairs over nothing for decades.
Chiming in, Steph said: "My character wasn’t kidnapped. I was abducted". Both laughed, Stephanie added: "...because there's a big difference" (she was joking), then Roman brought up Vince's preference of saying workers went to "the local medical facility" instead of the hospital.
That's lessened now too. Bruce Prichard had previously explained this away as protection against fan interference. Via his 'Something To Wrestle With' show, Prichard claimed that Vince specifically picked "local medical facility" as a nondescript catch-all term. According to him, that'd lessen the chances of fans calling hospitals in the nearby area to check if stars were alright, because they'd just assume that WWE had their own mobile facility.
Yeah, that's a bit far-fetched, but it was Vince logic.