WWE Changes Its Stance Regarding Talent Names
A change has taken place regarding what WWE allows a former wrestler to do when they leave the company.
For decades now, whenever a WWE superstar leaves the company, they have been forced to use a different name when they work somewhere else as long as it wasn’t the wrestler’s real name.
That’s why in the 1990s, familiar names like Diesel became Kevin Nash, Razor Ramon became Scott Hall, the 1-2-3 Kid became Syxx and more recently, Edge became Adam Copeland in AEW.
The rules that existed when Vince McMahon was running the company as WWE Chairman are no longer in place in terms of talent names. The new regime led by WWE President Nick Khan and Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque, who also runs the talent relations department, have different rules.
While speaking about new WWE signees like Stephanie Vaquer and Ethan Page, Bryan Alvarez of Wrestling Observer Live reported that the new WWE regime will allow wrestlers to use their names after departing WWE.
“I was told that these new TKO deals are such that when you go to WWE, they are going to trademark everything. For example, Ethan Page went and they trademarked Ethan Page. This is from someone in the company, when you leave they hand everything over to you now.”
New WWE Regime Changing The Game
Alvarez continued to explain the change that the new WWE regime is doing regarding name changes.
“Apparently when you leave WWE, and it’s kind of the same thing I think with AEW, it’s like she [Vaquer] can leave and take her name. Ethan Page can leave and take his name.”
“While you’re there, they own the rights to everything for pro wrestling. But that is a very big change from back in the day when they owned you into perpetuity. She very much wanted to keep her name and apparently, they’re allowing her to keep the name in WWE. They’re gonna trademark it while she’s there.”
Examples of wrestlers being allowed to keep their names post-WWE are Lince Dorado and Gran Metalik, which were mentioned by Alvarez on his show. Former WWE star Mustafa Ali is TNA’s X-Division champion and he has been using the name he had in WWE as well.
It was mentioned by Wrestlingnewsco that Stephanie Vaquer’s full legal name is Ana Stephanie Vaquer González so she could use Stephanie Vaquer if she left WWE. Meanwhile, Julian Micevski used the name Ethan Page before WWE. However, the point made by Alvarez is still valid about wrestlers being able to use their performer names outside of WWE.