Longtime WWE referee Mike Chioda has revealed that WWE management once wanted referees to act as locker room informants — keeping tabs on wrestlers and reporting back to the office. Chioda says he absolutely refused, and he protected the younger refs from being put in that position too.
Mike Chioda (Credits: Ringside News)
‘You Want Me to Stooge the Boys Out?’
Speaking with David Otunga, Chioda recalled that WWE officials — naming Mark Carrano and John Laurinaitis — wanted referees to monitor when wrestlers arrived at shows, and report anyone who showed up 30 minutes late.
Chioda thought the idea was ridiculous, and his reasoning was simple: these were the same wrestlers he had to travel with nearly 300 days a year and trust inside the ring. ‘You want the referees — the boys that put the money on the company’s table, the boys that put the money and the food on my table — you want me to stooge them out because they come in 30 minutes late?’ he recalled asking. ‘And you expect the boys to want to work with me overseas instead of cutting my hair or ribbing me? That ain’t happening.’
He also pushed back when younger referees were asked to snitch, telling Carrano: ‘You’re putting these young guns like Bones and all these other guys — you want them to stooge, and then these boys are going to get heat? Come on, let’s go a different route on that.’
Drug Tests Made It Even More Awkward
The snitching request wasn’t the only uncomfortable role Chioda described. Referees could also be tasked with finding wrestlers selected for drug tests and making sure they actually took them — meaning the ref became the person delivering unwanted news, then following the wrestler around.
‘The boys would be pissed to get away from me because if they’re doing something they shouldn’t be doing, the last thing you want is referees going, ‘Hey, you got to take a drug test,’ and then follow them around,’ Chioda said.
For Chioda, the issue was about trust — referees spend their careers earning enough of it that wrestlers feel safe putting matches and sometimes their bodies in their hands, and he wasn’t about to throw that away just to tell management somebody arrived half an hour late.
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Source: Ringside News — read the full story there.
