Mike Chioda took a stroll down memory lane on the latest installment of his “Monday Mailbag” series.
During this week’s episode, the former longtime WWE referee recalled the time the late Umaga was threatened with a fine for not applying his trademark facepaint when working non-televised live events.
“I remember me, Johnny Stamboli, Rey Mysterio, and Ekie in the car and we’re driving down. Ekie’s got a — he’s started this Umaga thing with the paint and all that stuff,” Chioda recalled. “So he’d go to TVs and have one of the guys paint his face all the time. We’re in the car on the way to a live event, I remember Johnny [Ace] calling him. He says, ‘Ek, you didn’t wear your face paint last night at the live event.’ Ek’s like, ‘Yeah, Johnny, I put it on the TVs.’ ‘You gotta start putting it on now or else you’re gonna get fined.’ He was like, ‘What?’”
Chioda continued, “So we tried to stop at a couple places to get some markers real quick because we had about an hour before we get to the show, then we had to do this. So we got black markers and I had to f****** paint his face in the car. That s*** didn’t come off for like three days until he got to TV. He was so pissed at Johnny too because Johnny was serious he was gonna fine him. And every time Johnny wanted something done, ‘Vince wants the face paint on.’ Vince’s name comes out all the time.”
Check out the complete episode at Patreon.com. H/T to WrestlingInc.com for transcribing the above quotes.
