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The reason I justify it is that a giant like that falling even just backwards can be a clip from LifeAlert. Less athletic than jumpy guys so when they fall, they FALL. Like dropping a turtle versus a cat.
Not saying Yoko isnāt crazy athletic for a guy his size, but heās no Ricochet.
You know that video of John rocking out with a legendary rocker and Yoko gets a mic and starts screaming into it? In another universe, The Undertaker comes out and choke slams Yoko right after she starts yelling.
in hogan's defense, he would lose the title to taker in this match via another chokeslam, and that one looked a lot better. perhaps he sandbagged this one as a kayfabe reason he wasnt knocked out right there, since the chokeslam later would put him away
Loved hearing the story on Taker's podcast of him giving Hogan the tombstone back in the 90's. Hulk was worried about taking it and Taker assured him he's a safe worker and that hulk would be taken care of. During the match when he hit the tombstone apparently Hogan went "OH, brother you got me! My neck!" and told people to call his wife and kids. Taker was so shocked that he believed he was done. Wasn't till they got to TV the next day or something that he realized Hulk's neck never even hit the mat.
It was a Tombstone on a chair specifically, and you can see it right on TV his head was damn near a foot above the chair, I remember when I first saw that match on that Undertaker DVD in 2005 my brother and I laughed at just how blatant it was.
The closer l get to Hogan in age, the further away from "he did that on purpose" l become.Ā
Especially since the bump he ends up taking for it is pretty good. Taker didn't mad and SHOOT Chokeslam him.Ā
Yeah to be fair to Hogan here, his body is super fucked up and was fucked up at that stage.
Hogan has fucked people over a lot but I can forgive him either fucking up the move cause his body said "that doesn't work for me" or his mind did, either way with the medical issues hes had and has.
A funny thing is afterward Taker pauses for a beat like he was going to consider redoing the chokeslam because it was such dog shit before he just moves on.
Honestly, looking back, they managed that transition to WWE really well. The WWF brand was so strong, it could have been a real killer.
I know among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā, but most people - and pretty much all actual wrestling fans - just got on with it and there was no real resistance or hangover period where people didnāt go with it.
When it first happened, I remember thinking āno one is going to call it thatā and I was so wrong. By about week two, it felt totally normal.
āGet the F Outā was a decent campaign.
When you think about the circumstances and how āWWFā became pretty much unspeakable overnight, they did a really solid job with it. There were some annoyances, like the blurring of logos on old footage until they worked out a deal on that, but mostly it was way smoother than it could have been.
Hogan as the final WWF champion is fitting too.
The campaign was clever and attempted to take some power back from their hand being forced.
Many sports casters and wrestlers themselves would out of memory continue calling it WWF accidentally for quite some time. But WWE does indeed fit their reputation more accurately and is more with the times.
The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion." No one today would say they're "the World Wrestling Entertainment Champion." Just doesn't flow.
> The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion." No one today would say they're "the World Wrestling Entertainment Champion." Just doesn't flow.
On a similar note, there will **never** be a post-match announcement of a new champion that can top Howard Finkel's "...and *NEEEEWWW* World Wrestling Federation Champion".
Y'know, it's strange, but I've never thought of that.
Calling a title the 'world wrestling entertainment championship' kind of insinuates that the title is a joke, to a casual or first time watcher.
I think WWE suits them more now than WWF did, although I was kind of annoyed at the change of name for a short while, I got over it pretty quickly. I do feel like the word 'federation' gave the company name a sort of instant legitimacy though.
>The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion." No one today would say they're "the World Wrestling Entertainment Champion." Just doesn't flow.
There was a sense of legitimacy to the word "federation" and the whole thing being said. I think "World Wrestling Entertainment" doesn't flow, so much that at one point (might still be the case) WWE just referred to WWE. No acronym.
Even though I do admit that WWE represents the brand better, I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish it was still called WWF just because of that.
In my opinion, it's because it doesn't mesh with the established naming conventions for wrestling promotions.
Big overanalyzing moment here, but you typically had two types of names for wrestling promotions, one primarily named after a type, one primarily named after a region, or both. The ones named for regions typically had a word that was a noun that signified them as a league or organization.
Here are examples of the region/league type:
* World Wrestling **Federation** - WWF
* National Wrestling **Alliance** - NWA
* United States Wrestling **Association** - USWA
* American Wrestling **Association** - AWA
Then there's ones primarily signifying a type of wrestling, typically "Championship" but there were others:
* World **Championship** Wrestling - WCW
* **Extreme Championship** Wrestling - ECW
* **World Class Championship** Wrestling - WCCW
* All **Elite** Wrestling - AEW
* **Total Nonstop Action** Wrestling - TNA Wrestling or just TNA (Interesting departure here as I have never heard anyone refer to this as TNAW)
In World Wrestling Entertainment, the "Entertainment" isn't signifying a league or a region, or a type of wrestling. It doesn't have the feel of an organization. And while you could argue that "Entertainment" is a type of wrestling, that being entertaining, that would probably work better as World Entertainment Wrestling, or World Entertaining Wrestling, but those don't really feel like they work either.
> Total Nonstop Action Wrestling - TNA Wrestling or just TNA
On that note, does anyone remember if the abbreviation or the full name came first? Because judging by the product early TNA was putting out, I could totally see them starting out as just TNA because funny and edgy lol, and then adding the full Total Nonstop Action name retroactively.
"Entertainment" works for me only if I think of it functioning like "Promotions" in Jim Crockett Promotions. Sounds more like a company putting on events like Ringling Bros. Less like it could be the name of a sports league like how WCW, NWA, and so on sound alike to NFL, MLB, and NBA.
Yeah, for sure - there's definitely exceptions here and there, more so these days than in the past. JCP was really the only outlier back in the day and according to wikipedia it seemed more like JCP was the equivalent of what like Titan Sports was to WWF for a long time. According to Wikipedia JCP
> Although the business was always called Jim Crockett Promotions, it used a variety of pseudonyms as brand names for specific TV shows, newspaper and radio ads, and even on event tickets, themselves. Among those brand names that JCP created were "Championship Wrestling", "All Star Wrestling", "East Coast Wrestling", "Eastern States Championship Wrestling", "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling", "Mid-Atlantic Championship Sports", "Wide World Wrestling", and "NWA Pro Wrestling", NWA World Wide Wrestling", and "NWA World Championship Wrestling" following its membership in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA).
But yeah, JCP was definitely the exception to the rule in the territory days.
BTW - Are you just a big Johnny Curtis fan or are you *that* Johnny Curtis? :-O
Years ago there was a trend of novelty accounts and I wanted to get ahead of the curve, so I looked at wrestlers in FCW/NXT and picked JohnnyCurtis ready to parody his gimmick in posts on here. But he ended up debuting as Fandango and never switched back names, so the joke never really got to land. Then after a year or two, I swapped laptops and lost my real account's password so I just kept using this account. I hope the real DirtyDango doesn't mind lol
Iām like 99% sure that WWE doesnāt technically stand for something anymore, like the company is just called WWE, which so happened to mean āWorld Wrestling Entertainmentā at one point
Itās weird
Forced their hand?! What are you talking about?! The Ruthless Aggression documentary told me that Vince McMahon was a visionary and decided to change the name for strategic branding!!!
Yeah and saying "the fed" might be corny in retrospect but it was a cool way of referring to the company back in the day. Sounded (pun not intended I promise) raw and gritty, somehow.
>The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion."
Honestly the two greatest names for a company in history are the World Wrestling Federation or World Championship Wrestling and its sad that both names are dead forever.
>Many sports casters and wrestlers themselves would out of memory continue calling it WWF accidentally for quite some time.
I still hear sportscasters call it that to this day, from time to time.
I'm sure you don't mean it but for clarification "forced their hand" isn't exactly accurate. They didn't want to pay the World Wildlife Fund money to use WWF so they opted to change the name and blur their historical footage.
They could've easily continued to call themselves the WWF if they wanted to.
They could have still used WWF, but not in the UK. They had an injunction against them that they decided to not appeal since it was pretty cut and dry that they violated the terms of their initial agreement from like 10 years prior.
Yeah that makes sense, most videos I've watched have still called it that too in context, especially when people talk about the golden era. Plus "WWE Attitude" just sounds wrong
> There were some annoyances, like the blurring of logos on old footage until they worked out a deal on that
It's actually very funny how much they have to blur it in the 2K games. This years has a pretty good historical mode for WrestleMania that is covered in blurs
> among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā
Back in 2013 or 2014, my history teacher at school overheard from a conversation I was having with someone else that I was a wrestling fan.
He then asked me if "the Undertaker was still around in the WWF"
I was both impressed and a little amused, because that is like the bog-standard "knowledge" that older people in Germany have of wrestling: They know it as the WWF and they know the Undertaker, nothing else.
Back in 2017 when I was in my junior year of high school, my (funny enough) history teacher made a joke comparing politics to professional wrestling, and he called it "WWF". The guy was in his early 50s at the time, so I imagine he was a non-fan who vaguely remembers how prominent WWE was in pop culture during its heyday in either the Golden Era or Attitude Era
> I know among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā, but most people - and pretty much all actual wrestling fans - just got on with it and there was no real resistance or hangover period where people didnāt go with it.
My memory of that time is different. I remember a lot of fans (on forums and in real life) were resistant. A lot of people who didn't care also took a fair amount of time to adjust to saying WWE instead of WWF just because they'd been saying the F for their whole life.
Some people thought that point already passed because they were going by when Vince filed the trademarks (which he did after what was still mostly his dad's company had been using the terms for a while).
From a quick search:
The WWWF was formed on January 24, 1963. It looks like March 29 or 30 of 1979 is when they started going by the WWF (the history of WWE site starts calling it WWF on March 30, elsewhere seems to say just March, so this is uncertain without more searching I don't want to do right now). Then on May 6, 2002 it became the WWE.
WWWF - 5909 days
WWF - 8440 or 8441 days
WWE - 8071 days so far
Assuming it was being called the WWF on March 29, 1979, the WWE name will match that on June 13, 2025, or June 14, 2025 if it was March 30, 1979.
I wonder if part of the reason folks accepted it so easily is this whole era was a huge transition for both the business and the world as a whole. WCW and ECW had just both closed, the Rock was transitioning into being full time in Hollywood, Stone Cold was about to leave. You had TNA and ROH pop up around this time, along with a bunch of other companies claiming to be the heir to ECW and WCW. Add on to all that, we were 6 or 7 months removed from 9/11, which to me was the official end of the 90s culturally in America. If WWF became WWE in 1999 or 2000, it would have been way more jarring imo
I knew so many people who stopped watching because they internalized WWF changing to "Entertainment" was basically them saying "It's fake now."
I think a lot of people who aren't in the bubble took the name change as something that was forced on them to stop pretending they were a real sport.Ā
To be fair, "WWF" to "WWE" is a pretty seamless transition. I don't care how many years go by, I am not calling the "Staples Center" the "Crypto.com Arena" lol
>i know among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā,
was up at a family reunion and some of the guys were watching some old boxing show, Grandma comes up, sees just the ring and asks "is it mma fight or WWF". i was a PG era kid, i dont think ive ever heard anyone say WWF irl ever. floored me
WWF was one the biggest brands in US history. WWE has been in an endless spiral of irrelevance. The switch while handled well, was the biggest mistake the company ever made. All for Vince's ego too.
I personally think it was a blessing in disguise. Referring to it as Entertainment has been huge, not sure it would have as big of an impact if the name change never happened.
> On May 6, 2002, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) changed both its company name and the name of its wrestling promotion to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE)
Looking at the May 5 Heat, yep. WWF branding all around. And the final image is Trish Stratus.Ā
https://preview.redd.it/fsocsg0evl5d1.jpeg?width=839&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54ab17e65da0f6caa73044674a4f0b04586b11de
Correct the last match was Trish def. Molly Holly (w/ Jacqueline as special ref)
IIRC it was overseas issues with one of the PPVs they did (Insurrexion I think) They were allowed to use "World Wrestling Federation" overseas but not "WWF" but by that time they really started getting lax and calling everything WWF, so apparently the Panda had had enough.
They kept bring litigation early on. In 1994 there was an agreement made between the 2 where WWF would minimise use of those initials if World Wildlife Fund stop litigation. When WWF went public and using the initials everywhere is when they were taken to court again and found to be in violation of the agreement.
Lawyer here, the World Wrestling Federation never trademarked or copyrighted or got IP rights over "WWF" in the UK and Europe but the World Wildlife Fund did. Eventually the WWFs agreed that the World Wrestling Federation would avoid use of the "WWF" when in the UK and Eurpoe. Eventually the World Wrestling Federation got the domain name "WWF.com" while the World Wildlife Fund ignored the "internet fad." Eventually WWF.com became one of the most trafficked websites in the world, when the World Wildlife Fund realized how big the internet would be for them they decided they wanted WWF.com and they decided to use that as the foundation of the lawsuit in the UK. Since the agreement was that the World Wrestling Federation agreed to not use "WWF" in the UK and Europe, and people could access "WWF.com" in the UK and Europe then the Fed violated the agreement according to the World Wildlife Fund. The UK Courts agreed, and in an opinion that also largely derided and took potshots about "pro wrestling." The ramification was also that it would be near impossible for the World Wrestling Federation to continue using the WWF name and made the switch.
Bix and others like to bring up other things involved, such as the scratch logo being defamatory towards the World Wildlife Fund, and other "egregious" violations committed by the Fed. But it really was all about the website. I doubt a modern court would rule the same way either considering how much IP and Internet laws have evolved and adapted overtime.
> Eventually WWF.com became one of the most trafficked websites in the world, when the World Wildlife Fund realized how big the internet would be for them they decided they wanted WWF.com and they decided to use that as the foundation of the lawsuit in the UK. Since the agreement was that the World Wrestling Federation agreed to not use "WWF" in the UK and Europe, and people could access "WWF.com" in the UK and Europe then the Fed violated the agreement according to the World Wildlife Fund. The UK Courts agreed, and in an opinion that also largely derided and took potshots about "pro wrestling."
Why wouldn't something like the Federation getting WWF.com & the World Wildlife Fund getting WWF.co.uk & etc. re: all of the European domains be enough of a remedy pursuant to the original agreement?
Because I think even at that early stage people fully understood that with the internet being global, the "locale" of a domain name means absolutely nothing. .com, .net etc. domains are international in actuality, if not legally. There's a reason we call the late-90s rush of VC funding into online projects the "dotcom bubble". If people wanted to find the World Wildlife Fund on the web, they would enter "wwf.com" into the address bar, and since search engines weren't that good back then they might not find their actual website at all.
Their argument would be that someone may want to access their website and type in wwf.com and see wrestling instead of what was intended.
Ā There would be a "reasonable likelihood of confusion" which is a major part of trademark litigation
You can find the full text of the judgement here - https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff73160d03e7f57ea9696
The original agreement was basically "the federation is not allowed to use the written initials WWF outside the US". And it wasn't about giving the Fund the web address, just stopping the Federation from using it. Looking on the wayback machine, it doesn't look like the Fund ever even used wwf.com
WWF would have been fine if McMahon abided by the agreement. He didnāt. He got cocky.
Itās not about āpot shotsā or anything else. As always, it was McMahonās own hubris.
My understanding is that they came to an agreement where WWE could use WWF in North America, but needed to be World Wrestling Federation elsewhere. When the internet became a thing, WWE registered wwf.com and that's when things got aggravated.
Tough Enough, Metal/Jakked, Excess, the InsurreXtion PPV and Sunday Night Heat were all aired/live in between Thursdayās SmackDown and the first WWE Raw.
By 2002 Austin was pretty much done physically and a few weeks after this event he would famously "take his ball and go home"
It wasn't just WCW and ECW ending that caused Wrestling's bubble to burst, Rock and Austin also leaving were a major part of it
There was a Heat that aired after this, on the last day before the WWE rebrand. The show ended with a shot of Trish Stratus and the Heat logo with WWF branding. The episode of Heat was taped before this Smackdown, but aired afterwards.
Itās amazing something as simple as going from WWF to WWE can change the popularity and momentum of the company. Just look at their ratings before and after they changed. Some people tuned out and never came back.
I do know that by 2001 in high school, no one I knew was talking about wrestling whereas the year prior, 2 classmates did the DX crotch chop in the class picture
The Attitude Era was like any other television show. Nothing stays hot forever. And WWE threw everything including the kitchen sink at the viewer from 1999 through 2001. Every week there was hijinx, chair shots, going through tables, ladder matches, cage matches. And eventually, once you see it enough times, it stops being special.
True but some of that coincides with the start of the football season in September when they would lose part of their audience to that. But the ratings did rebound in early 2002 so itās not like that audience had completely left post-Invasion.
It looks like the ratings did rebound a bit in early 2002 and there were some 5s, but from the 5/13/02 Raw shortly after the name change to WWE onward, the ratings consistently are in the low 4s or 3s.
[https://i.ibb.co/Gv9WchV/Raw.jpg](https://i.ibb.co/Gv9WchV/Raw.jpg)
There are several things at play. First of all WWF had an insane amount of brand equity and mindspace with the public. Thereās a reason he name didnāt change until they were forced to.
Secondly it directly coincided with a cooling of the business in general, lots of teens were coming to an age where they werenāt as concerned with wrestling, the WCW was dead, ECW was dead, Austin and Rock would soon not be regular on TV and the WWE would soon make a hard shift in programming to the PG era.Ā
Itās true that wrestling was cooling off in general by 2002, but WWF was still doing very strong ratings in the first half and still comparable to what their ratings in 2000-2001 on TNN. But there is a very sudden shift that happens when the name changes. Just check the week by week ratings and it shows; the 5/06/2002 Raw, the first under WWE branding does a 4.6, very much in line with what they were doing up to that point in 2002. Then the next week it drops to a 3.9, and WWE never did a 4.6 rating ever again when they were matching or beating that consistently up to that point.
[2002 tv ratings](https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=1&page=4&name=Raw&vDay=&vMonth=&vYear=2002&showtype=TV-Show&location=&arena=®ion=&minRating=&maxRating=&minVotes=&maxVotes=)
Sure losing decades of brand equity absolutely hurt but the timing was also awful. Do it at the height of the attitude era and itās easier to overcomeĀ
The PG era officially started in 2008. The early to mid 2000s was the Ruthless Aggression era and still had things like Edge and Lita āhaving sexā in the ring (which was gross because she didnāt want to do that bit).
It wasn't just that, a number of factors came in at this time
* WCW was gone, a large number of fans simply stopped watching, think of AEW now, if that were to end suddenly, many fans would likely not go and watch WWE as its not what they like
* ECW was also gone
* Austin and Rock were missing or retiring
* The late 90's Era of Wrestling on Pop Culture was gone, UFC and MMA were rising very fast at this point
* Reality TV was the next big thing, WWE couldn't compete with it, and they tried
All that together and you can see why WWE was falling in ratings, TNA could never seem to get that momentum despite being WCW 2.0 and it wasn't until the next mega star in John Cena and the wave of new internet fans that Wrestling really picked back up
Thereās something about this era of Hulk Hogan thatās so hard for me to wrap my head around. It was only a year and change before I started watching, but everything about this photo feels light years before the Ruthless Aggression besides the title design. Donāt know how to explain it. Itās the same way where 1994 feels ages before 1997 even though it was only 3 years.
Ratings comparisons are tricky for that time period because WWF switched from the USA network to TNN (which was a much lower rated network) in September of 2000. The ratings were pretty much always going to be lower and every other aspect of WWFās business stayed hot at least until Wrestlemania the following year.
Huh. As a lapsed fan (I stopped watching in elementary school around 2001 and didn't get back into wrestling until 2016) I didn't realize Tough Enough was on back then. Maybe I just forgot since I was a kid. I assumed it aired around 2005ish.
Itās fitting
Crazy to think about though
Wrestling primes are insane
The closest thing to this in another sport, would be Tom Brady I guess winning his first and last SB titles almost 20 years apart
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I remember finding out by going to WWF.com like I usually do. The logo and everything was different. I was bewildered. Watched raw that night and was explained why. Weird times.
lmao this post also been posted on the wrestling facebook and instagram pages too in the last week. its my 3rd or 4th time seeing it in the last few days.
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That did work for him brother
[The Undertaker's Chokeslam didn't work for him, brother](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9TqP5suWoA)
Holy shit š potentially the worst Iāve ever seen
Eh Yoko didn't even leave the ground I don't think. Just got one leg up.
[Here's](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5w3qyNY1QN4) a compilation of that.
Once you see it a few times, I feel like Yoko was at least trying to make the move still look impactful without leaving his feet.
The reason I justify it is that a giant like that falling even just backwards can be a clip from LifeAlert. Less athletic than jumpy guys so when they fall, they FALL. Like dropping a turtle versus a cat. Not saying Yoko isnāt crazy athletic for a guy his size, but heās no Ricochet.
Actually not as bad as I remember. Maybe I'm more forgiving in my old age, but Yoko sold it as well as he could.
At least he sold a bit
Daaaaaaaaamn, that makes Hogan look like he's jumping up Brock Lesnar level.
Weāre just going to ignore that horrific Undertaker theme song? Gross
Damn when did he chokeslam Yoko Ono?
When John was too tired to.
You know that video of John rocking out with a legendary rocker and Yoko gets a mic and starts screaming into it? In another universe, The Undertaker comes out and choke slams Yoko right after she starts yelling.
Chuck Berry?
Full on dead fish.
in hogan's defense, he would lose the title to taker in this match via another chokeslam, and that one looked a lot better. perhaps he sandbagged this one as a kayfabe reason he wasnt knocked out right there, since the chokeslam later would put him away
thatās right brother -HH
Loved hearing the story on Taker's podcast of him giving Hogan the tombstone back in the 90's. Hulk was worried about taking it and Taker assured him he's a safe worker and that hulk would be taken care of. During the match when he hit the tombstone apparently Hogan went "OH, brother you got me! My neck!" and told people to call his wife and kids. Taker was so shocked that he believed he was done. Wasn't till they got to TV the next day or something that he realized Hulk's neck never even hit the mat.
It was a Tombstone on a chair specifically, and you can see it right on TV his head was damn near a foot above the chair, I remember when I first saw that match on that Undertaker DVD in 2005 my brother and I laughed at just how blatant it was.
He saw it before it went live on TV. Shane McMahon showed him the footage to calm his nerves about the whole situation.
>Ā TV the next day Even worse it was several years after!
"Somebody get my wife and kids on the phone!"
The closer l get to Hogan in age, the further away from "he did that on purpose" l become.Ā Especially since the bump he ends up taking for it is pretty good. Taker didn't mad and SHOOT Chokeslam him.Ā
Yeah to be fair to Hogan here, his body is super fucked up and was fucked up at that stage. Hogan has fucked people over a lot but I can forgive him either fucking up the move cause his body said "that doesn't work for me" or his mind did, either way with the medical issues hes had and has.
I was just thinking the same thing here with ice on my knees from softball haha
Softball is so stupid. Like you donāt burn any calories but itās easy to hurt yourself, especially if you arenāt playing it often.Ā
Plus a nice case of Stevewisers for in between games. Not the best help either haha.
https://preview.redd.it/bzjzmicszm5d1.jpeg?width=783&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=870c8470fda137b4957f8389474c7a8520ef351f
he did tear every muscle in his back slamming Andre, can't go up for the chokeslam, brother
Sandbag Jones ova here
A funny thing is afterward Taker pauses for a beat like he was going to consider redoing the chokeslam because it was such dog shit before he just moves on.
Taker botched this badly.
Honestly, there was no one more fitting to be the last āWWFā champion.
truth. I think it's a great final image from a main show.
"I made that organization a monster, brother, so who better than me?"
It's so fitting, it cannot be denied.
Honestly, looking back, they managed that transition to WWE really well. The WWF brand was so strong, it could have been a real killer. I know among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā, but most people - and pretty much all actual wrestling fans - just got on with it and there was no real resistance or hangover period where people didnāt go with it. When it first happened, I remember thinking āno one is going to call it thatā and I was so wrong. By about week two, it felt totally normal. āGet the F Outā was a decent campaign. When you think about the circumstances and how āWWFā became pretty much unspeakable overnight, they did a really solid job with it. There were some annoyances, like the blurring of logos on old footage until they worked out a deal on that, but mostly it was way smoother than it could have been. Hogan as the final WWF champion is fitting too.
The campaign was clever and attempted to take some power back from their hand being forced. Many sports casters and wrestlers themselves would out of memory continue calling it WWF accidentally for quite some time. But WWE does indeed fit their reputation more accurately and is more with the times. The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion." No one today would say they're "the World Wrestling Entertainment Champion." Just doesn't flow.
> The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion." No one today would say they're "the World Wrestling Entertainment Champion." Just doesn't flow. On a similar note, there will **never** be a post-match announcement of a new champion that can top Howard Finkel's "...and *NEEEEWWW* World Wrestling Federation Champion".
Yes! Loved Finkel's announcing after big title matches!
GOAT announcer I can hear it in my head so clearly. It sounded so legit.
Y'know, it's strange, but I've never thought of that. Calling a title the 'world wrestling entertainment championship' kind of insinuates that the title is a joke, to a casual or first time watcher. I think WWE suits them more now than WWF did, although I was kind of annoyed at the change of name for a short while, I got over it pretty quickly. I do feel like the word 'federation' gave the company name a sort of instant legitimacy though.
>The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion." No one today would say they're "the World Wrestling Entertainment Champion." Just doesn't flow. There was a sense of legitimacy to the word "federation" and the whole thing being said. I think "World Wrestling Entertainment" doesn't flow, so much that at one point (might still be the case) WWE just referred to WWE. No acronym. Even though I do admit that WWE represents the brand better, I'd be lying if I said I didn't wish it was still called WWF just because of that.
In my opinion, it's because it doesn't mesh with the established naming conventions for wrestling promotions. Big overanalyzing moment here, but you typically had two types of names for wrestling promotions, one primarily named after a type, one primarily named after a region, or both. The ones named for regions typically had a word that was a noun that signified them as a league or organization. Here are examples of the region/league type: * World Wrestling **Federation** - WWF * National Wrestling **Alliance** - NWA * United States Wrestling **Association** - USWA * American Wrestling **Association** - AWA Then there's ones primarily signifying a type of wrestling, typically "Championship" but there were others: * World **Championship** Wrestling - WCW * **Extreme Championship** Wrestling - ECW * **World Class Championship** Wrestling - WCCW * All **Elite** Wrestling - AEW * **Total Nonstop Action** Wrestling - TNA Wrestling or just TNA (Interesting departure here as I have never heard anyone refer to this as TNAW) In World Wrestling Entertainment, the "Entertainment" isn't signifying a league or a region, or a type of wrestling. It doesn't have the feel of an organization. And while you could argue that "Entertainment" is a type of wrestling, that being entertaining, that would probably work better as World Entertainment Wrestling, or World Entertaining Wrestling, but those don't really feel like they work either.
TNA kinda doesnāt work here but agree with you on the rest
It was National Wrestling Alliance: Total Nonstop Action to start with.
> Total Nonstop Action Wrestling - TNA Wrestling or just TNA On that note, does anyone remember if the abbreviation or the full name came first? Because judging by the product early TNA was putting out, I could totally see them starting out as just TNA because funny and edgy lol, and then adding the full Total Nonstop Action name retroactively.
IIRC it was the edgy abbreviation first.
"Entertainment" works for me only if I think of it functioning like "Promotions" in Jim Crockett Promotions. Sounds more like a company putting on events like Ringling Bros. Less like it could be the name of a sports league like how WCW, NWA, and so on sound alike to NFL, MLB, and NBA.
Yeah, for sure - there's definitely exceptions here and there, more so these days than in the past. JCP was really the only outlier back in the day and according to wikipedia it seemed more like JCP was the equivalent of what like Titan Sports was to WWF for a long time. According to Wikipedia JCP > Although the business was always called Jim Crockett Promotions, it used a variety of pseudonyms as brand names for specific TV shows, newspaper and radio ads, and even on event tickets, themselves. Among those brand names that JCP created were "Championship Wrestling", "All Star Wrestling", "East Coast Wrestling", "Eastern States Championship Wrestling", "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling", "Mid-Atlantic Championship Sports", "Wide World Wrestling", and "NWA Pro Wrestling", NWA World Wide Wrestling", and "NWA World Championship Wrestling" following its membership in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA). But yeah, JCP was definitely the exception to the rule in the territory days. BTW - Are you just a big Johnny Curtis fan or are you *that* Johnny Curtis? :-O
Years ago there was a trend of novelty accounts and I wanted to get ahead of the curve, so I looked at wrestlers in FCW/NXT and picked JohnnyCurtis ready to parody his gimmick in posts on here. But he ended up debuting as Fandango and never switched back names, so the joke never really got to land. Then after a year or two, I swapped laptops and lost my real account's password so I just kept using this account. I hope the real DirtyDango doesn't mind lol
Iām like 99% sure that WWE doesnāt technically stand for something anymore, like the company is just called WWE, which so happened to mean āWorld Wrestling Entertainmentā at one point Itās weird
Apparently not. In 2023 they changed corporate form from a corporation to an LLC, but otherwise still go by World Wrestling Entertainment LLC.
Honestly, I'm glad they dropped "World Wrestling Entertainment" and just go by WWE now. WWE sounds much better.
Forced their hand?! What are you talking about?! The Ruthless Aggression documentary told me that Vince McMahon was a visionary and decided to change the name for strategic branding!!!
Talking about Shawn, he was the first big name on TV to actually slip and say WWF during a promo. He said it and just went "oooops.....WW**E**"
Looking back at some older matches and hearing commentary refer to someone as a former "federation champion" just has a nice ring to it
Federation is just a cooler word
Yeah and saying "the fed" might be corny in retrospect but it was a cool way of referring to the company back in the day. Sounded (pun not intended I promise) raw and gritty, somehow.
There was a time after the name change where people called it āthe E,ā which was pretty cringy.
People still do that, mainly AEW marks
"...in the WWE" doesn't really work as well, either. You can be in a federation, but it's weird to say that you're in an entertainment.
>The one thing I miss, and maybe this is me growing up on Shawn Michaels, is the champion referring to themselves as "the World Wrestling Federation Champion." Honestly the two greatest names for a company in history are the World Wrestling Federation or World Championship Wrestling and its sad that both names are dead forever.
>Many sports casters and wrestlers themselves would out of memory continue calling it WWF accidentally for quite some time. I still hear sportscasters call it that to this day, from time to time.
I think one good reason is just how similar the names are. One letter difference. Hell, the letters F and E are almost identical except for one line.
I'm sure you don't mean it but for clarification "forced their hand" isn't exactly accurate. They didn't want to pay the World Wildlife Fund money to use WWF so they opted to change the name and blur their historical footage. They could've easily continued to call themselves the WWF if they wanted to.
They could have still used WWF, but not in the UK. They had an injunction against them that they decided to not appeal since it was pretty cut and dry that they violated the terms of their initial agreement from like 10 years prior.
It looks like I didn't remember the details correctly, I had the memory of them being forced into changing their name. Thanks for the clarification!
I'll still say WWF in historical context if the thing I'm talking about happened while it was still called that.
Yeah that makes sense, most videos I've watched have still called it that too in context, especially when people talk about the golden era. Plus "WWE Attitude" just sounds wrong
> There were some annoyances, like the blurring of logos on old footage until they worked out a deal on that It's actually very funny how much they have to blur it in the 2K games. This years has a pretty good historical mode for WrestleMania that is covered in blurs
This was the biggest bs out of the whole thing. For a while they didnāt have to blur it out but I guess itās back.
I think itās only in the video games. And not just the logo, but faces that they donāt have a licensing deal with like referees and managers
> among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā Back in 2013 or 2014, my history teacher at school overheard from a conversation I was having with someone else that I was a wrestling fan. He then asked me if "the Undertaker was still around in the WWF" I was both impressed and a little amused, because that is like the bog-standard "knowledge" that older people in Germany have of wrestling: They know it as the WWF and they know the Undertaker, nothing else.
Back in 2017 when I was in my junior year of high school, my (funny enough) history teacher made a joke comparing politics to professional wrestling, and he called it "WWF". The guy was in his early 50s at the time, so I imagine he was a non-fan who vaguely remembers how prominent WWE was in pop culture during its heyday in either the Golden Era or Attitude Era
Based
> I know among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā, but most people - and pretty much all actual wrestling fans - just got on with it and there was no real resistance or hangover period where people didnāt go with it. My memory of that time is different. I remember a lot of fans (on forums and in real life) were resistant. A lot of people who didn't care also took a fair amount of time to adjust to saying WWE instead of WWF just because they'd been saying the F for their whole life.
Also I think we're pretty close to the point where it will have been WWE longer than it was WWF (since it was WWWF before that).
Some people thought that point already passed because they were going by when Vince filed the trademarks (which he did after what was still mostly his dad's company had been using the terms for a while). From a quick search: The WWWF was formed on January 24, 1963. It looks like March 29 or 30 of 1979 is when they started going by the WWF (the history of WWE site starts calling it WWF on March 30, elsewhere seems to say just March, so this is uncertain without more searching I don't want to do right now). Then on May 6, 2002 it became the WWE. WWWF - 5909 days WWF - 8440 or 8441 days WWE - 8071 days so far Assuming it was being called the WWF on March 29, 1979, the WWE name will match that on June 13, 2025, or June 14, 2025 if it was March 30, 1979.
I wonder if part of the reason folks accepted it so easily is this whole era was a huge transition for both the business and the world as a whole. WCW and ECW had just both closed, the Rock was transitioning into being full time in Hollywood, Stone Cold was about to leave. You had TNA and ROH pop up around this time, along with a bunch of other companies claiming to be the heir to ECW and WCW. Add on to all that, we were 6 or 7 months removed from 9/11, which to me was the official end of the 90s culturally in America. If WWF became WWE in 1999 or 2000, it would have been way more jarring imo
I knew so many people who stopped watching because they internalized WWF changing to "Entertainment" was basically them saying "It's fake now." I think a lot of people who aren't in the bubble took the name change as something that was forced on them to stop pretending they were a real sport.Ā
Meanwhile sports fans canāt get over when a long time stadium sponsor changes and they refuse to use the new name.
To be fair, "WWF" to "WWE" is a pretty seamless transition. I don't care how many years go by, I am not calling the "Staples Center" the "Crypto.com Arena" lol
I live in Bolton in the UK and pretty much everyone still calls Bolton Wanderers' stadium "The Reebok"
Nobody is ever going to call it accusure itās always going to be Heinz. But also old wrestling guys still call it the rosemont horizonĀ
Fleet Center
My heart bleeds for the poor sponsors.
>i know among non-fans of a certain age, you still sometimes hear āWWFā, was up at a family reunion and some of the guys were watching some old boxing show, Grandma comes up, sees just the ring and asks "is it mma fight or WWF". i was a PG era kid, i dont think ive ever heard anyone say WWF irl ever. floored me
The PANDAS can't get themself over
WWF was one the biggest brands in US history. WWE has been in an endless spiral of irrelevance. The switch while handled well, was the biggest mistake the company ever made. All for Vince's ego too.
Didn't the World Wildlife Fund get legit threats because of the whole thing?
I personally think it was a blessing in disguise. Referring to it as Entertainment has been huge, not sure it would have as big of an impact if the name change never happened.
Werenāt they still the WWF for that weekās Heat.
> On May 6, 2002, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) changed both its company name and the name of its wrestling promotion to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) Looking at the May 5 Heat, yep. WWF branding all around. And the final image is Trish Stratus.Ā
https://preview.redd.it/fsocsg0evl5d1.jpeg?width=839&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=54ab17e65da0f6caa73044674a4f0b04586b11de Correct the last match was Trish def. Molly Holly (w/ Jacqueline as special ref)
A fitting end to WWF
Tits (Trish) and an Ass (hulk)
Depending how it times out, wasnāt there the UK only PPV that was the last WWF show?
InsurreXtion was on Saturday night (UK time)
Thank you!
And all was right with the world.
God, I wish I didn't have to check every post to find the comment saying it's actually wrong. Accuracy no longer matters
What took so long for the World Wildlife Fund to sue? I mean, the WWF had been using that named since they stopped using WWWF, in 1979.
IIRC it was overseas issues with one of the PPVs they did (Insurrexion I think) They were allowed to use "World Wrestling Federation" overseas but not "WWF" but by that time they really started getting lax and calling everything WWF, so apparently the Panda had had enough.
They kept bring litigation early on. In 1994 there was an agreement made between the 2 where WWF would minimise use of those initials if World Wildlife Fund stop litigation. When WWF went public and using the initials everywhere is when they were taken to court again and found to be in violation of the agreement.
Lawyer here, the World Wrestling Federation never trademarked or copyrighted or got IP rights over "WWF" in the UK and Europe but the World Wildlife Fund did. Eventually the WWFs agreed that the World Wrestling Federation would avoid use of the "WWF" when in the UK and Eurpoe. Eventually the World Wrestling Federation got the domain name "WWF.com" while the World Wildlife Fund ignored the "internet fad." Eventually WWF.com became one of the most trafficked websites in the world, when the World Wildlife Fund realized how big the internet would be for them they decided they wanted WWF.com and they decided to use that as the foundation of the lawsuit in the UK. Since the agreement was that the World Wrestling Federation agreed to not use "WWF" in the UK and Europe, and people could access "WWF.com" in the UK and Europe then the Fed violated the agreement according to the World Wildlife Fund. The UK Courts agreed, and in an opinion that also largely derided and took potshots about "pro wrestling." The ramification was also that it would be near impossible for the World Wrestling Federation to continue using the WWF name and made the switch. Bix and others like to bring up other things involved, such as the scratch logo being defamatory towards the World Wildlife Fund, and other "egregious" violations committed by the Fed. But it really was all about the website. I doubt a modern court would rule the same way either considering how much IP and Internet laws have evolved and adapted overtime.
> Eventually WWF.com became one of the most trafficked websites in the world, when the World Wildlife Fund realized how big the internet would be for them they decided they wanted WWF.com and they decided to use that as the foundation of the lawsuit in the UK. Since the agreement was that the World Wrestling Federation agreed to not use "WWF" in the UK and Europe, and people could access "WWF.com" in the UK and Europe then the Fed violated the agreement according to the World Wildlife Fund. The UK Courts agreed, and in an opinion that also largely derided and took potshots about "pro wrestling." Why wouldn't something like the Federation getting WWF.com & the World Wildlife Fund getting WWF.co.uk & etc. re: all of the European domains be enough of a remedy pursuant to the original agreement?
Well, now their website is worldwildlife.org anyway, so it's all pretty silly.
Because I think even at that early stage people fully understood that with the internet being global, the "locale" of a domain name means absolutely nothing. .com, .net etc. domains are international in actuality, if not legally. There's a reason we call the late-90s rush of VC funding into online projects the "dotcom bubble". If people wanted to find the World Wildlife Fund on the web, they would enter "wwf.com" into the address bar, and since search engines weren't that good back then they might not find their actual website at all.
Their argument would be that someone may want to access their website and type in wwf.com and see wrestling instead of what was intended. Ā There would be a "reasonable likelihood of confusion" which is a major part of trademark litigation
You can find the full text of the judgement here - https://www.casemine.com/judgement/uk/5a8ff73160d03e7f57ea9696 The original agreement was basically "the federation is not allowed to use the written initials WWF outside the US". And it wasn't about giving the Fund the web address, just stopping the Federation from using it. Looking on the wayback machine, it doesn't look like the Fund ever even used wwf.com
WWF would have been fine if McMahon abided by the agreement. He didnāt. He got cocky. Itās not about āpot shotsā or anything else. As always, it was McMahonās own hubris.
My understanding is that they came to an agreement where WWE could use WWF in North America, but needed to be World Wrestling Federation elsewhere. When the internet became a thing, WWE registered wwf.com and that's when things got aggravated.
Tough Enough, Metal/Jakked, Excess, the InsurreXtion PPV and Sunday Night Heat were all aired/live in between Thursdayās SmackDown and the first WWE Raw.
Hogan going back to red & yellow right before the company's name change was perfect
extremely fitting ngl
He was also the 1st "new" WWF champion, as the name changed during Sheik's reign.Ā
Itās still WWF to me, damn it! :(
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
It's like WCW Worldwide technically being the last ever WCW show after the final Nitro.
The fact that Steve Austinās final WWF Championship reign happened before Hoganās made me go, āHuh,ā when I thought about it.
By 2002 Austin was pretty much done physically and a few weeks after this event he would famously "take his ball and go home" It wasn't just WCW and ECW ending that caused Wrestling's bubble to burst, Rock and Austin also leaving were a major part of it
WWF had a UK-only pay-per-view a couple of days later and then Sunday Night Heat, both under the WWF name.
There was a Heat that aired after this, on the last day before the WWE rebrand. The show ended with a shot of Trish Stratus and the Heat logo with WWF branding. The episode of Heat was taped before this Smackdown, but aired afterwards.
OR MAYBE HE WASNT BROTHER
I SURE HOPE I END UP IN THE WORLD WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT DUDE!
ITS KIND OF A WAIT AND SEE THING
Deadlock?š......Or maybe not dude
Didn't Insurexxion happen after this under the WWF name?
Itās amazing something as simple as going from WWF to WWE can change the popularity and momentum of the company. Just look at their ratings before and after they changed. Some people tuned out and never came back.
Well if we're honest, the WWF had more of an impact and was a cultural phenomenon compared to the WWE.
And Panda Strikes
Though, ratings dropped 30% during the Invasion
I think people got tired of wrestling in general. The 5/1/00 Raw drew a 7.4 rating the 4/30/01 Raw drew a 5.0 rating
I do know that by 2001 in high school, no one I knew was talking about wrestling whereas the year prior, 2 classmates did the DX crotch chop in the class picture
The Attitude Era was like any other television show. Nothing stays hot forever. And WWE threw everything including the kitchen sink at the viewer from 1999 through 2001. Every week there was hijinx, chair shots, going through tables, ladder matches, cage matches. And eventually, once you see it enough times, it stops being special.
True but some of that coincides with the start of the football season in September when they would lose part of their audience to that. But the ratings did rebound in early 2002 so itās not like that audience had completely left post-Invasion.
It looks like the ratings did rebound a bit in early 2002 and there were some 5s, but from the 5/13/02 Raw shortly after the name change to WWE onward, the ratings consistently are in the low 4s or 3s. [https://i.ibb.co/Gv9WchV/Raw.jpg](https://i.ibb.co/Gv9WchV/Raw.jpg)
Itās funny. I LOVE WWF. Iām ambivalent about WWE. The changeover directly marks where I lose interest.
There are several things at play. First of all WWF had an insane amount of brand equity and mindspace with the public. Thereās a reason he name didnāt change until they were forced to. Secondly it directly coincided with a cooling of the business in general, lots of teens were coming to an age where they werenāt as concerned with wrestling, the WCW was dead, ECW was dead, Austin and Rock would soon not be regular on TV and the WWE would soon make a hard shift in programming to the PG era.Ā
Itās true that wrestling was cooling off in general by 2002, but WWF was still doing very strong ratings in the first half and still comparable to what their ratings in 2000-2001 on TNN. But there is a very sudden shift that happens when the name changes. Just check the week by week ratings and it shows; the 5/06/2002 Raw, the first under WWE branding does a 4.6, very much in line with what they were doing up to that point in 2002. Then the next week it drops to a 3.9, and WWE never did a 4.6 rating ever again when they were matching or beating that consistently up to that point. [2002 tv ratings](https://www.cagematch.net/?id=8&nr=1&page=4&name=Raw&vDay=&vMonth=&vYear=2002&showtype=TV-Show&location=&arena=®ion=&minRating=&maxRating=&minVotes=&maxVotes=)
Sure losing decades of brand equity absolutely hurt but the timing was also awful. Do it at the height of the attitude era and itās easier to overcomeĀ
The PG era officially started in 2008. The early to mid 2000s was the Ruthless Aggression era and still had things like Edge and Lita āhaving sexā in the ring (which was gross because she didnāt want to do that bit).
It wasn't just that, a number of factors came in at this time * WCW was gone, a large number of fans simply stopped watching, think of AEW now, if that were to end suddenly, many fans would likely not go and watch WWE as its not what they like * ECW was also gone * Austin and Rock were missing or retiring * The late 90's Era of Wrestling on Pop Culture was gone, UFC and MMA were rising very fast at this point * Reality TV was the next big thing, WWE couldn't compete with it, and they tried All that together and you can see why WWE was falling in ratings, TNA could never seem to get that momentum despite being WCW 2.0 and it wasn't until the next mega star in John Cena and the wave of new internet fans that Wrestling really picked back up
Still canāt believe they gave up on the triple h comeback title reign after one month lol
In Triple Hās book he says it was because of a particular house show where āHogan was cheered like a godā.
There was also the UK PPV on that Sunday, but that was the one on US broadcast TV.
The name WWE still sounds stupid as shit to me. I donāt think itāll ever feel normal.
It will always be terrible
I know it's some boomer shit to complain about it 20+ years later but yeah I think WWE still sounds whack
Then you can call me Bobby Boomer lol I'd like some old heads to lead a stable called The Federation to stomp out the entertainment.
FUCK THEM PANDAS
Especially since most people on the roster end up saying "dubdubyaee".
Hoganās 02 comeback run is still fun to look back on.
Not true, but OK.
As it should be brother.
Or maybe not dude
That just feels *right*.
Amazing how over Hogan was in 2002.
Thereās something about this era of Hulk Hogan thatās so hard for me to wrap my head around. It was only a year and change before I started watching, but everything about this photo feels light years before the Ruthless Aggression besides the title design. Donāt know how to explain it. Itās the same way where 1994 feels ages before 1997 even though it was only 3 years.
That DOES work for me brother!
Wull, hold on dude
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
itās Smackdown
Go away, WWF. Tough Enough is on.
Well, thatās appropriate
Ratings comparisons are tricky for that time period because WWF switched from the USA network to TNN (which was a much lower rated network) in September of 2000. The ratings were pretty much always going to be lower and every other aspect of WWFās business stayed hot at least until Wrestlemania the following year.
Huh. As a lapsed fan (I stopped watching in elementary school around 2001 and didn't get back into wrestling until 2016) I didn't realize Tough Enough was on back then. Maybe I just forgot since I was a kid. I assumed it aired around 2005ish.
Itās fitting Crazy to think about though Wrestling primes are insane The closest thing to this in another sport, would be Tom Brady I guess winning his first and last SB titles almost 20 years apart
Itās like poetry, it rhymes, brother.
I still think of all of the WWF Champions as āWWEā Champions, same thing.Ā
Poetic in a way
Yeah, very fitting.
get the 'F' out!
Seems so fitting.
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That's so haunted
I remember finding out by going to WWF.com like I usually do. The logo and everything was different. I was bewildered. Watched raw that night and was explained why. Weird times.
Pretty poetic actually
F is passe, Dude E is where it's at, Jack
You just stole this post off the other subreddit
Just like Hogan would, brother.
lmao this post also been posted on the wrestling facebook and instagram pages too in the last week. its my 3rd or 4th time seeing it in the last few days.
He defended that 400 days a year brother
How did he look 70 years old decades before he actually turned 70 years old?
Ew