It's all a blur

Vince McMahon is a guy you don’t want to mess with. When he was establishing the World Wrestling Federation in the early days, he angered a lot of other wrestling promotions by syndicating his show and invading their territories. Ever since he established the WWF as the dominant wrestling organization, he’s been untouchable.

Back in 1983, well before the recent baseball steroid scandal, the federal government took a run at the WWF. On November 18, 1993, Vince McMahon was indicted on charges of possesion and conspiracy to distribute anabolic steroids. Even though the government had the testimony of the Hulk Hogan, the company’s biggest star, after the jury deliberated for 16 hours, McMahon was acquitted of all charges.

In the 90s, Vince faced fierce competition from WCW, a wrestling organization owned by Ted Turner. WCW, using Turner’s bottomless pockets to buy up the WWF’s talent, was able to dominate in the ratings. But McMahon was able to refocus his organization and turn the tides. WCW ended up filing for bankruptcy and on March 26, 2001, after buying WCW, Vince McMahon appeared on the final episode of Nitro, WCW’s flagship television show.

Everyone who has ever crossed Vince McMahon has lost - except one organization. One group was able to go toe-to-toe with the most powerful man in sports entertainment and win. And, ironically enough, that group is also known as the WWF - the World Wildlife Fund.

The World Wildlife Fund sued the World Wrestling Federation over the use of the WWF initials because of an agreement the two groups reached in 1994 (while the World Wrestling Federation was preoccupied with McMahon’s federal indictment). The World Wildlife Fund registered it’s panda logo with the WWF initials when it was founded in 1961.

The Wildlife Fund claimed that there would be confusion in the marketplace. They were worried someone might confuse the two groups and think that for some reason a bunch of tree hugging panda lovers were beating the hell out of each other inside a steel cage. Of course, what is really confusing is that the World Wildlife Fund actually uses a different name outside of the United States, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, but that is beside the point.

In May of 2002, the World Wrestling Federation officially changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Now, you are probably thinking that this isn’t that big of a deal. A rose by any other name still smells as sweet and a wrestling federation by any other name still contains guys beating the hell out of each other using a series of highly choreographed moves. Not to mention the fact that I’m writing about something that happened almost four years ago (Murphy’s Law - always topical). But, when the court ruled against the World Wrestling Federation, they also told the company that they were no longer allowed to use the scratch logo that became popular during the WWF’s Attitude era.

Which brings us to this Christmas, when I opened up a present from my brother. He surprised me by buying me a box set containing every Wrestlemania ever released (all 21 of them). I’ve been watching all of them, starting with number one. It’s been a lot of fun reliving all of these classic moments from my childhood and teenage years. I’ve already rewatched Wrestlemania III, where Hulk Hogan bodyslamed Andre the Giant and Wrestlemania XII, where Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels put on a fantastic Ironman Match (great move by Gorilla Monsoon restarting that match with both men in neutral corners).

But, when I got to the Attitude Era, it got considerably less fun. Because of the lawsuit with the World Wildlife Fund, they now have to blur out the WWF scratch logo. Now, that doesn’t sound too bad, but if you watch one of these DVDs for a few seconds, you quickly realize why this is a big deal. It seems the WWF was pretty fond of that logo - they put it on the ring apron, the turnbuckles, the belts, every graphic and chyron they ever put on the screen and even the t-shirts of the ring crew and camera men. So basically, every match has about 3/4 of the screen blurred out. It’s incredibly distracting and it’s ruined my enjoyment of my Wrestlemania boxset.

Something needs to be done. I went out yesterday and kicked a panda and, while it did make me feel better, it really didn’t do much to help. So I’m appealing to you Vince McMahon, the guy who took down WCW and beat the federal government. The guy who screwed over Bret Hart and made Bart Gunn disappear after he got knocked out by Butterbean. Come on, Vince, there has got to be some way for you to destroy this company. Don’t let them be the ones to finally get one over on you.

Random thought of the week:
I love how all of the commercials and radio promotions that have to keep referring to the Super Bowl as "The Big Game" because they aren't an official NFL sponsor. I'm pretty sure those same rules don't apply to this website, so - Super Bowl, Super Bowl, Super Bowl. Besides, call it personal preference, but considering how boring the two conference playoff games were and my complete apathy toward Seattle and Pittsburg, but I hardly see Super Bowl XL being a much of a "Big Game."

Joel Murphy is the creator of HoboTrashcan, which is probably why he has his own column. He also has some really hot friends. You can contact him at: murphyslaw@hobotrashcan.com