In 2002, legal issues would force the World Wrestling Federation to undergo a sudden rebranding. As a result, the company would jettison their old name in favor of a new one, World Wrestling Entertainment. All of a sudden, WWF became WWE and re-releases of old matches arrived with the classic logos censored.
Recently, WWE straight-up misrepresented the reasons for the name change in their Ruthless Aggression documentary series, portraying the shift rebranding as another bold move by the visionary Vince McMahon to signal a new direction for the company. So what made WWF become WWE, and why are wrestling fans so mad about pandas?
10 An Extra W
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 decisions led to the company breaking away and becoming the Word Wide Wrestling Federation in 1963. From there, the WWWF’s popularity in the Northeast continued to grow.
9 World Wrestling Federation
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 into a national one. This meant wiping out the competition, securing syndicated television deals, selling video tapes, and signing popular talent from rival promotions like Hulk Hogan, who was working for the American Wrestling Association when he appeared in Rocky III.
8 The World Wildlife Fund
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.
Over the years that followed, the World Wildlife Fund would become one of the largest environmental organizations in the world, working to raise money to fund conservation efforts. More relevantly, the company has a recognizable logo which not only depicts a panda, but also the initials WWF.
7 International Expansion
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 words, the Federation could sell a T-shirt with the shiny, blocky WWF logo, but was NOT allowed to sell a T-shirt that had “WWF” on it in a font like the one readers are currently looking at in this article. In return, The Fund would not oppose the Federation’s trademark filing.
6 Legal Battles
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 WWF Magazine.
In addition to those hijinks, the World Wrestling Federation was getting a lot of bad press about all the drug use, steroids, and sexual abuse happening behind the scenes. This naturally intensified the World Wildlife Fund’s desire to avoid getting confused with the other WWF.
5 The 1994 Agreement
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 strict.
Moreover, the Federation was to stop all their trademark shenanigans, except for trademarking their specific logo. In exchange, the World Wildlife Fund would stop fighting them in court unless they felt that the agreement was broken.
4 The Agreement Is Broken
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.
More damning, however, was the fact that the World Wrestling Federation launched its own website, which had the domain of WWF.com. The World Wildlife Fund contended that this was a blatant disregard of their agreement to not use the initials, 'WWF' in print.
3 Another Legal Battle
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.
As for the logo, the Federation contended that the “scratch logo” was simply an evolution of the “block logo” and didn’t violate their agreement. The court didn’t see it that way, viewing the Federation’s decisions as brazen, considering that they were aware of the agreement they made with the Fund, and ruled against them.
2 Get The F Out
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 the almost-swear in it was funny enough to disguise the fact that the World Wrestling Federation was doing this because it got sued.
1 The F Gets Out
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 DVD or showed archival footage, it had to mute utterances of “WWF” and blur out the logo.
This practice came to an end when WWE entered a new agreement with the World Wildlife Fund that allowed them to use the uncensored footage, which likely saved WWE a lot of time when it came to preparing classic content for the WWE Network. However, WWE still can’t use the WWF logos on any new products.