6 Surprising Things Wrestlers Have Copyrighted & Nobody Else Can Use Freely

Copyrights and trademarks are quite common in wrestling. Every wrestling promotion tries to protect its intellectual property to prevent others from stealing the characters or popular phrases they came up with. Many wrestlers (such as Hulk Hogan) have also adopted this practice and now own the rights to certain things that no one else is allowed to use without their consent, unless they are ready to face legal trouble.

Some of these trademarks can be quite surprising, given the nature of the wrestling industry and its unique surroundings. The following wrestlers are some examples of this.

6 Diamond Dallas Page’s Diamond Cutter Sign

Back in 2005, Diamond Dallas Page sued Jay-Z for using his Diamond Cutter hand gesture, which is known as the Roc symbol in the hip-hop world. Page had trademarked the hand gesture years before Jay-Z started using it. They settled the case outside of court. But a few years back, Jay-Z tried to trademark this iconic symbol again, and it looks like he got it.

Aside from the diamond-like shape, the Roc symbol and the Diamond Cutter don’t have that many similarities. In the wrestling context, everyone knows that’s DDP’s Diamond Cutter, but for the rest of the world, it’s the Roc sign.

5 Sting Owns “Sting”

Wrestlers owning their ring names isn’t uncommon. Lots of wrestlers, especially those who’ve been working independently for a long time, own the trademark to their character name so they are free to use it everywhere. In the celebrity world, it’s not that common for two people to use the same name and make it big. Sure, if the industries are too different, then it might work. But in the entertainment industry, this is something that’s quite rare. Now Sting, the wrestling icon, holds the trademark for the “Sting” name. A lot of fans are probably also familiar with the singer Gordon Sumner, who also uses the stage name Sting.

4 Hulk Hogan’s Deal With Marvel

Terry Bollea started playing the Hulk Hogan character in the 80s, and it quickly became the number one thing in wrestling. The Hulk Hogan character is still talked about to this day. Most fans already know that the “Hulk” in Hulk Hogan was taken from Marvel’s Hulk character. After Hogan skyrocketed to stardom, Marvel realized that their intellectual property was being used in wrestling to make money. As a result, they struck a deal together where The Hulkster claimed WWE paid around $100,000 for him to be able to wrestle as Hulk Hogan.

It was a 20-year deal that ran from 1985 to 2005 (with some added clauses like not being able to use “Hulk” as a standalone name, not being able to wear green and purple, and some other things). Hogan then got a one-year extension with the help of his lawyer to continue using this nickname. As part of the deal, he also got a fair market value clause added should Marvel ever decide to sell the trademark. That’s exactly what happened when Marvel and WWE got into a legal battle, and Marvel lost and owed them $35 million. They tried to settle by giving them the Hulk Hogan trademark, and as soon as The Hulkster found out about it, he bought this brand at a fair market value of $750,000. He said: "You guys screwed up now. Because now I don’t have to pay 35 Million dollars for the name, you have to sell it to me at a fair market value. Which is only like 750 grand." Hogan also revealed that Vince McMahon tried to buy this trademark from him, but Hogan refused.

3 Taz & The FTW Championship

Some years ago, Taz brought the FTW Championship to All Elite Wrestling in similar circumstances as when he first introduced it in 1998, when Shane Douglas was injured. This time, it was Jon Moxley who couldn’t defend the AEW World Title against Brian Cage, which led to Taz bringing back the FTW Title.

Even though the title first appeared in ECW, they didn’t own the belt. It was completely Taz’s entity, and he holds the copyright to do whatever he wants with it.

2 John Morrison Owns Slamtown

The beauty of wrestling is that you can make up a lot of things, from ring names to some past story with another wrestler or just about anything else as the storyline onscreen progresses. This sometimes includes wrestlers’ billed heights as well as their billed place. In John Morrison’s case, one of the nicknames he uses is “The Mayor of Slamtown,” and back in 2020, he filed a trademark with USPTO for the same.

1 Chris Jericho Trademarks #FlimFlam

Back in April 2020, Chris Jericho announced something called the Flim Flam dance challenge and asked wrestling fans all over the world to record themselves performing those steps and using the #FlimFlam hashtag and the best one would've been edited by the AEW team with some music and video effects. The Bubbly Bunch, as they called themselves, also performed the same dance on an episode of Dynamite.