WWE recently filed trademarks for three old WCW properties in SuperBrawl, New Blood Rising and The Match Beyond. Speculation mounts out of that, naturally, that we may see a return of any of these, repurposed as television specials or premium live events. Or, maybe, WWE just wants to make sure they still own the trademarks for legal reasons and nothing more.
Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day! This time around, let’s shift our focus back to those three WCW names and ask “Should any of these 3 trademarks return? And if so, how?”
Be sure to drop your response to this question in the comments below!
Here’s my take on them:
SuperBrawl – Yes
This is such a good name. How has WWE not used it over all these years?!
Traditionally, this was a February event to obviously try to coincide with the Super Bowl. WWE has Halftime Heat that they’ve done a few times, but rarely. Not only do I think Halftime Heat should be a thing every year, but I think SuperBrawl should be used in February, too. Hell, I think they should bring back Battlebowl as well!
Admittedly, the event schedule is already somewhat packed around that time of the year. WWE will have Royal Rumble in February, followed by Elimination Chamber. NXT will have gone through Vengeance Day around February 4th and build toward Roadblock in early March.
But the 2025 Super Bowl LIX takes place Sunday, February 9th. Why not classify the SmackDown prior to it (Feb 7th) or the Raw immediately following on the 10th as a SuperBrawl episode? Put a few noteworthy matches on the show—which already happens on a frequent basis—and give it that extra subtitle, similar to New Year’s Revolution and WWE Day 1 and such, and voila.
New Blood Rising – No
This is dumb. It reeks of exactly the time frame it’s from (2000). There might as well be an X in there, since that was so cool at the time.
Calling an event “New Blood Rising” was because of the New Blood stable. Since that doesn’t exist anymore, it doesn’t serve as much of a purpose. Also, it’s like calling an event “WWE Wild Goose Chase University”
Funny enough, The Judgment Day is the opposite of this, taking a WWE pay-per-view and repurposing it as a team name. Oddly, that’s worked perfectly.
The only way I could see this potentially working is if it tied into Solo Sikoa’s version of The Bloodline, as in the new blood in that family tree is rising up to overthrow the old guard. Even then, I don’t think this is strong enough as a name on its own to justify being a pay-per-view. It would have to be repurposed as either the tagline to an episode of Raw or SmackDown in an even lesser way than what I just mentioned for SuperBrawl, or something like a documentary feature about them.
If WWE were still doing the subtitles for pay-per-views that they did in the pandemic era, then maybe. But this isn’t In Your House: Mind Games. We’ve got things like Crown Jewel and Bash in Berlin coming up instead.
We’re not even in an NXT 2.0 era where New Blood Rising would work for the developmental talent—not that I have any interest in revisiting that concept.
The Match Beyond – Absolutely Not
Welcome to the wooooorld of tomorroooowwwww. No. This name is also stupid. It comes off to me like the hokey sales pitch of the carny days.
Plus, this just refers to WarGames. Not only do we already have WarGames, but that’s been slapped onto Survivor Series. Can you imagine heading into November and being excited for “WWE Survivor Series: WarGames – The Match Beyond 2024”?
I can’t think of a single way that WWE could properly utilize this name without it being either completely useless or just sounding silly.
Would you like to see these names brought back in some way? If so, how? Drop your answers to this EWN QOTD below and keep the discussion going!
