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- After previously being known as the 'WWF', WWE was forced to change its company name after losing a drawn-out legal battle with the World Wildlife Fund.
Feb 18, 2020 · This is, of course, utter nonsense: The name change was a major mainstream news story, the result of legal action from the Worldwide Fund for Nature, which is better known as the World...
People also ask
Why did the World Wrestling Federation change its name?
Why did WWE change the name 'WWF'?
Why was CWC renamed World Wrestling Federation?
Why did WWF rebrand?
- 10 An Extra W
- 9 World Wrestling Federation
- 8 The World Wildlife Fund
- 7 International Expansion
- 6 Legal Battles
- 5 The 1994 Agreement
- 4 The Agreement Is Broken
- 3 Another Legal Battle
- 2 Get The F Out
- 1 The F Gets Out
The shift to WWE wasn’t the first time the company changed its name. In 1953, the promotion began as the Capitol Wrestling Corporation. Soon it would become a pretty big wheel in the National Wrestling Alliance, thanks to the CWC’s popularity in the Northeast United States. However, a dispute with the NWA over booking decisionsled to the company br...
In 1979, the company shortened its name to the World Wrestling Federation, a decision that coincided with the transition of the company from the hands of Vincent J. McMahon to his son, Vincent K. McMahon (the one fans know today). At the helm of the WWF, the younger McMahon began expanding operations to turn the promotion from a regional success in...
Before the World Wrestling Federation existed with those initials, there was a previously existing WWF: the World Wildlife Fund. This WWF was founded in April of 1961, after a group called the International Union for Conservation of Nature was revealed to be struggling financially. RELATED: 10 WWE Superstars Who Had Multiple Name Changes, Ranked Ov...
In 1989, the World Wildlife Fund noticed that the World Wrestling Federation had applied for an “international class trademark” for WWF, and pursued action. The two parties negotiated, and the World Wrestling Federation agreed not to use the initials “WWF” in a plain typeface font, so as to not confuse the wrestling WWF with the panda WWF. In other...
However, as the World Wrestling Federation continued its international expansion, things between the two WWFs got contentious. In the 1990s, the Federation tried to block World Wildlife Fund trademark filings in various companies, which came to a head when the Fund sued the Federation in Switzerland over the Fed putting out a Swiss version of their...
Despite its crumbling reputation, the World Wrestling Federation never backed down in their legal battle, and so the two WWFs forged an agreement in 1994. This agreement stipulated that the World Wrestling Federation was never allowed to use the initials WWF in print and to avoid orally using “WWF” as much as possible, though the latter was less st...
In 1997, the World Wrestling Federation did two things to finally draw the ire of the World Wildlife Fund. First the company rolled out a new logo, referred to as the “scratch logo,” which the Fund felt was far too readable as “WWF,” as the original “block logo” was determined to look enough like “WF” that no one would confuse the two entities. REL...
In 2002, the World Wildlife Fund took the World Wrestling Federation to court in the UK over the above. The Federation’s legal team argued that they were allowed to use WWF in the US, and that the agreement doesn’t cover the Internet -- and moreover, that they had no idea the Internet would be such a big deal when they registered the WWF.com domain...
To the World Wrestling Federation’s credit, the way it rolled out its legally required rebranding was fairly clever and highly appropriate, given that the company at the time was known for delivering an “edgy” product. The ad campaign was centered around the phrase “Get The F Out”, to signify it was getting rid of the F in its name and logo, but th...
The transition to World Wrestling Entertainment was made public on Sunday, May 5th, 2002, with the first show under that banner being the Raw the following night. For about a decade, whenever WWE released matches on DVDor showed archival footage, it had to mute utterances of “WWF” and blur out the logo. This practice came to an end when WWE entered...
- Senior Author
Apr 6, 2023 · On May 5, 2002, the World Wrestling Federation officially announced its name change to World Wrestling Entertainment, or WWE. The new name was accompanied by a marketing campaign entitled “Get the ‘F’ Out,” which emphasized the removal of the “F” from WWF.
Jun 4, 2022 · Through the 1960s and 1970s, the promotion continued to be known as the WWWF until its name was changed by dropping the superfluous second W, shortening the name to the World Wrestling Federation in 1979.
- Matt Reigle
The public branding of the company has undergone several name changes throughout the years, from the CWC to the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) in 1963, then the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1979, and to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) in 2002.
Jan 9, 2019 · The reality is, the name did unconsciously signify a new era but that wasn't the reason it was changed. In 1980, Vince McMahon Jr. founded the company Titan Sports and...
May 5, 2022 · The naming was actually a shortening of their corporate full name: “World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Inc.”. A press release the day after would detail how, for many years, there was the consideration of dropping “Federation” from the company name.
