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Eric Bischoff shares honest take on WWE changing ring names

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WWE recently made some changes to the names of the talents. This has been the case for years now and WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff spoke about WWE’s trademark and licensing deals on the latest episode of Strictly Business.

The former WCW President spoke about several talents who have had their names changed once they get to WWE, like WALTER to Gunther and Pete Dunne to Butch, and revealed why WWE ultimately makes that move.

Eric Bischoff shares his take on the matter

Bischoff spoke in particular about Gunther as he detailed why it wouldn’t make sense for WWE to allow him to use a name he established on the independents with the company.

‘If he was WALTER in his indy career and he’s going to be WALTER on Monday Night RAW or SmackDown, then there’s a cloud over who owns that trademark,’ Bischoff said. ‘WWE doesn’t want to have intellectual property, talent, storylines, creativity, promotion, all of the other things that go into the value of building that intellectual property if they don’t own it. Who would do that?

‘That would be the same thing as you or I deciding we’re going to rent a piece of property, a beach-front property, we don’t own it, we’re going to rent it and then we both decide I know we’re only renting that property, we don’t really own it but let’s build a house on it. We built a big beautiful home on this big piece of beachfront property and then the guy that owns the title to the property shows up and goes, this is awesome, you guys did a great job, built my dream home on the property that I own. See ya, here’s your eviction notice. You’ve invested all of this money on a beautiful home, on a piece of property that you don’t even own. In this case, WALTER is the property that they don’t really own and in this case, Gunther is the home.’

It was recently as last week that WWE decided to shorten the name of WWE star. It was noted there was a change in the name of Austin Theory to just Theory, something the company has done a lot recently, changing Matt Riddle to just Riddle as well. 

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Written by
Bishal Roy