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Wrestling name change question

By Scott Keith on 21 April 2017


With the Simon Gotch /Simon Grimm development.
How much does a wrestler have to change the actual name not to get into any legal trouble?

Would names like Chris Masterpiece, Ben Kennedy, Damien Sandowsky fly?

​The name is less important a factor than the gimmick itself. Since Chris Masters was "The Masterpiece", that’d be treading on some shaky legal ground. But he could be "Chris Marsters" or something vaguely like the gimmick without actually being the gimmick. Basically you can’t use trickery to make fans think that you’re still portraying a gimmick that is WWE intellectual property. That being said, they frequently don’t care if guys do small indy shows, it’s more if someone is taking the gimmick to a TV competitor and acting in opposition to WWE. It doesn’t really matter if Simon Gotch is now Simon Grimm, but he can’t be playing a turn of the century strong man in TNA or he’s getting sued. ​

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