Referees are also selected by their employers subject to their height and weight, and normally referees would be no more than six feet (183 cm) tall, weigh no more than 180lb (81. It can also take the form of the referee taking an inordinate amount of time to talk to the heroic wrestler for violating the rules.

On the November 15, 2010 episode of Raw, the referees wore the "boxing referee" attire as part of the Old School Raw special episode. Most professional wrestling promotions have a kayfabe rule that referees do not make decisions based on anything they do not personally witness.

began wearing blue polo shirts with black pinstripes, differentiating themselves from the Raw referees, who continued to wear black and white shirts.

In WCW, referees wore collared shirts with bow ties until around 1999, when they switched to striped shirts. In some cases, a special referee is put into a match which is already a different match type or stipulation (for example: Hell in a Cell with a special referee, usually Shawn Michaels).

When any of these happen, the referee usually appears to be knocked unconscious for a period of time by a move that is not considered particularly devastating when applied to a wrestler. After the X sign is given, the officials backstage would communicate to the referee, if necessary, revised plans to end the match quickly. In recent years, to prevent the spread of blood-borne diseases such as hepatitis, WWE referees began keeping a pair of latex medical gloves in their pockets.

In ECW, referees first wore striped shirts (as they split off from the NWA), and later wore an all-black uniform akin to those of mixed martial arts officials, later with a half-black, half-red shirt.

This practice was phased out the WWE throughout the 2010s, as a reflection on the general trend of treating female wrestlers less as models and more like genuine athletes; WWE, AEW, and Impact all now regularly feature female referees on their programming wearing the same uniform as their male counterparts. Following AEW's All Out where a match was stopped in the middle for medical checkup, referees now have two-way radio communication so they can observe incidents during matches that may require medical attention by communicating with medical officials if necessary on the spot.