WWE Set Several Restrictions For Mickie James’ Royal Rumble Appearance

There is no doubt that Mickie James has established herself as one of the best female pro wrestlers in the history of the business. Jame was released by WWE back in April last year and then she promptly made her way to NWA and then Impact Wrestling.

Mickie James would go on to become the Knockouts Champion as well. Mickie James’ appearance in the Women’s Royal Rumble was much hyped and it certainly lived up to it.

James came out as the 20th entrant in the Women’s Royal Rumble match, as she entered to her Hardcore Country theme, wearing the Impact Knockouts World Championship around her waist. James lasted a decent amount of time until she was eliminated by Lita.

It was a big moment for her, but it seems there were a lot of restrictions imposed on her appearance as well. According to Will Washington on the Fightful Grapsody podcast, there were caveats to ‘literally everything’ surrounding James’ return. In addition to that, WWE allowed announcers to say ‘IMPACT’ but not ‘IMPACT Wrestling.’

“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.”

We will have to wait and see what is next in store for Mickie James when it comes to her future in WWE. Fans would love to see her compete more in both WWE and Impact Wrestling.

h/t Cultaholic