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Sometimes WWE finds it best to put their wrestlers through a little rebranding. It's important to give their performers something to bite into, especially if what they've been doing lately hasn't worked. We saw the success of this tactic with Stone Cold Steve Austin when he abandoned "The Ringmaster" gimmick. The same goes for Rocky Maivia when he simply went as "The Rock."
However, sometimes the rebranding ends in complete failure. There's an old saying that goes, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it," but that doesn't stop WWE from wrapping everything they own in duct tape.
Today we'll be looking at five WWE name changes that fans immediately disliked. Some of these ended up working better in the long run, as rare as that may be. Let's go ahead and get the most obvious choice out of the way.
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#5 Piper Niven becomes Doudrop on WWE RAW
Yeah, you knew this was going to be on here. Piper Niven came to NXT UK back in 2019 with major fan support. On the independent scene as Viper Niven, Piper was quite the dominant force. Both she and longtime frenemy and NXT UK Women's Champion Kay Lee Ray were known for their brutality inside the ring.
Both women brought their fierceness with them to NXT UK to resounding success. As rumors swirled of Piper coming to the main roster to work as Eva Marie's back up, fans were cautiously optimistic. That is until they heard the name "Doudrop."
Though WWE touts the importance of WWE Network and Peacock, they tend not to worry too much about any credibility someone builds up on there. Stars from NXT and NXT UK have made transitions to other brands only for the main roster to act as if they've never been a part of the company before, and that's what we're seeing with Piper now.
To be fair, WWE seems to have played the fans on this one. While reports revealed the idea for the name last week, the company decided to play on that outrage and give Eva Marie a lot of heat. When Piper Niven was asked to give her name on RAW, she was cut off by Marie, who thought for a moment before calling her Doudrop.
Niven, er...Doudrop, was not happy about this at all and even left All Red Everything to be pinned in a tag team match that night. What this means for the duo remains to be seen.
Hopefully, Doudrop is only around for a cup of coffee and the powerhouse known as Piper Niven can reveal her name to a company that should already know it by now. Fans will realize, quite soon, just how great she is, though. Whether she's Doudrop or Piper Niven, she's going to be a star.
#4 The Wyatt Family captures WWE gold as The Bludgeon Brothers
Erick Rowan and the late great Brodie Lee, known around this time as Luke Harper, debuted on WWE's main roster as part of Bray Wyatt's group The Wyatt Family. The trio was a monstrous faction of heavy hitters led by a cult leader capable of brainwashing the masses with ease.
To this day, The Wyatt Family is considered one of the greatest factions of the 2010s. Unfortunately, they never truly reached their peak when they were together.
For some reason, WWE was deadset on breaking the group up time and time again, bringing about quite a bit of infighting. After Harper and Rowan left the group in 2017, we saw vignettes of the duo seemingly ready for a comeback.
Fans were ecstatic, as they had great chemistry together and had pulled out a lot of tag team classics in the past. In fact, they'd do the same within the next year, though under a different name. While WWE could've just gone with "Harper and Rowan," they instead decided to hand them both giant mallets and robes, calling themselves the "Bludgeon Brothers."
It was not well received by fans, who considered it a little too cartoony at the time. Seriously, check out the comments in the first tweet above. People were ready for it to fail immediately.
Luckily for WWE, Harper and Rowan were fantastic together, and their dominant matches soon left fans wondering why they disliked the name in the first place. The second they saw the entrance, fans were immediately sold on the name. Great talent can make any gimmick work, as we saw with these two.
#3 WWE ruins several names with RETRIBUTION
WWE, what in God's name was this?
After months of SmackDown getting hacked and a random group attacking the Performance Center with Molotov cocktails and chainsaws, RETRIBUTION was finally unleashed. The group was filled with some top-tier talents from NXT. Dominik Dijakovic, Mia Yim, Shane Thorne, Mercedes Martinez, and Dio Madden were all well-known by the WWE Universe at this point.
For some reason, though, the top brass didn't know this, opting to give them all goofy half-masks and ridiculous names. Dijak became T-Bar. Yim was Reckoning while Thorne had maybe the worst name in Slapjack, and Martinez was Retaliation before being cut from the group entirely and sent back to NXT. Madden became Mace, which was a pretty awful name but considering his lack of time in-ring, he probably walked away least affected by all of this.
Eventually, Mustafa Ali was revealed to be the leader, and was thankfully spared from being called Skullmasher or Pain or Killer spelled backwards. It's been a little under a year since the group's debut, and they've now all parted ways. However, for some reason, Dijak and Madden are still using those ridiculous names. Yim and Thorne are nowhere to be seen, and Ali after being abandoned by the group he once led, is hanging out on Main Event.
Terrible names, terrible story. That may be the worst decision WWE made in 2020.
#2 WWE ends the War
Remember how psyched people were when War Machine were on their way to WWE? One of the greatest tag teams of this generation coming off a hot run in NJPW and moving to WWE's best brand. What could go wrong?
Well, there was a minor hiccup at first, as Hanson and Rowe were forced to become War Raiders. Most assumed it had to do with the team sharing the roster with another team, Heavy Machinery, and didn't think much of it. The War Raiders dominated the tag division, and fans got to chant "War" everywhere the team went. All in all, it was a great time for the duo.
When they left for the WWE's main roster, though...well. It was certainly an experience to be remembered.
Still holding the NXT Tag Titles, Hanson and Rowe were renamed Ivar and Erik, with WWE's main roster fully embracing the biking gimmick. They were then called The Viking Experience, and fans hated it. Rightfully so, that name is God awful.
It was also strange because they were still on NXT where they were known as The War Raiders. It was a weird disconnect and another example showing that the main roster truly does not watch nor care about its third brand. In no time, the name was changed to The Viking Raiders. Fans were upset because the whole "War" part of the name was pretty vital.
It was a great chant, and it helped get crowds involved in their matches. Apparently, the change had to do with WWE not wanting to use "War" on national television. Whatever the reasoning was, fans never really got behind the change. As great as the team is, deciding to change so much really damaged their run on the main roster. And let's face it, chanting "Raid" just isn't the same.
#1 WWF becomes WWE
Remember when WWE lost a lawsuit to the World Wildlife Fund? That was weird. Back in 1994, Titan Sports agreed to a deal with the World Wide Fund for Nature where they would limit the use of the WWF acronym in their broadcasts and advertising.
In 2000, though, the World Wide Fund for Nature sued World Wrestling Federation Entertainment Inc. in the UK, claiming that they'd violated the 1994 agreement, which led to the company officially changing their name two years later.
Weirder still was the World Wrestling Federation's ad campaign to change their name. In an effort to get fans behind the move, they began airing ads that were punctuated with the phrase "Get the F Out!"
Several raunchy and/or violent adverts punched home the message that the "F" wasn't cool and that it was time to move on and evolve. The company would focus more on the "entertainment" aspect of things.
To this day, hardcore and older fans of wrestling still refuse to call WWE by their name, referring to them still as WWF or simply, "the fed." It's a little crazy to think, honestly, that the now World Wildlife Fund was able to force such a major change on a company that's often refused to budge on several occasions. After all, Vince McMahon is not usually one to admit defeat.
