During the Netflix docuseries “Mr. McMahon,” Vince McMahon discussed the WWF’s name change to WWE in 2002, which occurred after the promotion lost a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund.
WWE started considering removing the word “Federation” from its name after World Wildlife Fund (also known as World Wide Fund for Nature) won a court case in the United Kingdom.
The court decision prohibited the World Wrestling Federation from using the logo it adopted in 1998 and the letters WWF in specific situations. The Fund suggested that despite the significant differences between the two organizations, there was a potential for confusion in the market due to both using the letters WWF.
The Fund also clarified that it did not wish to be associated with the World Wrestling Federation.
McMahon said, “When this lawsuit was filed, we tried to fight it, as we do most lawsuits. It looked like, ‘Wait. We’re not gonna win this thing.’ They had, in fact, used the initials WWF long before we did. So it changed from WWF to WWE because we were entertainment. It wasn’t necessarily a good thing that we had to change our name. I didn’t want to change, but you can’t do anything about it. Once something is closed, you have to move on. Whenever there is a failure, and there’ve been a lot of failures in my life, if you allow it to fester like, ‘I wish that would have worked. If I’d have done this, that would’ve worked.’ It’ll drive you nuts. Let it freaking go and think about something positive and work at something positive, not anything that’s negative.”
The “Mr. McMahon” docuseries, comprising six one-hour episodes, delve into the numerous sexual misconduct allegations made against McMahon by several women over the years.
