"Get The "F" Out"

(Slogan, World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment, 2001)
In 1963, a dispute between Vince McMahon Sr. and partner promoters resorted in McMahon opening his own promotion, The World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF) McMahon's company traded under this name for over fifteen years, before a cosmetic name change was made, dropping the "Wide" part to make the shorter World Wrestling Federation (WWF)
This name became synonymous with Western professional wrestling throughout the 80's and 90's.

The World Wildlife Fund For Nature (WWF) had used the same initials since it's inception in 1961, but generally the two companies had little to no issues with the fact that the other company shared the same name. In 1994, an agreement was reaced wherein The Wildlife Fund and the Wrestling Federation came to an agreement that McMahon would be allowed to use the WWF initials internationally but limited it's permissibility in certain areas, particularly merchandising.

However, in 2000 the charity believed that the McMahon had violated these terms and filed a lawsuit against the wrestling promotion. In 2001, an English court decided in favour of the Panda pals and, on May 5th of that year, the wrestling federation officially changed its twenty year old trading name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). McMahon changed his companies branding literally overnight, one day they were WWF.com, twenty-four hours later, they were WWE.com.
Using the slogan "Get The "F" Out" WWE did its trademark "re-write history" thing as it blindly punched its audience in the face that the company was now the WWE and had never, ever been called the WWF, ever ever. They even released a T-shirt line with the slogan emblazoned on it.

Without boring you with all the dull law-speak, there are a bizarre mix of rules and loopholes associated with the name change. All merchandise bearing the WWF name had to be taken off shelf by a certain date, meaning a massive discount on all WWF branded merchandise the world over which was a bonanza for collectors. All DVD releases of WWE events before the name change had heavy visual and audio editing to remove any and all references to "WWF" This results in a very horrible viewing experience and has rapidly increased the value of "original" non-edited versions of these events. WrestleMania XVII (arguably the greatest WrestleMania) is rendered nearly unwatchable in its censored form, a mass of blurs and audio cuts. It resembles my vision after I eat cheese (no, really)

The only thing more blurry than WWE DVDs are the loopholes. A rule disallows the audio of anyone saying "WWF" BUT only one visual version of the WWF logo is banned, meaning the company can show this logo on their DVDs if they wish: (1984-1997)

but not this logo: (1997-2001)

As one final freak hypocrisy, the UK DVDs of older events are not censored. An international loophole allows publisher Silvervision to release all past events visually and audibly intact, only U.S distributed DVDs are censored. This has obviously led to a huge market of Stateside wrestling fans importing the UK DVDs in for their collection.

When all is said and done, the company now IS World Wrestling Entertainment and has been for many years now. Personally, I think it was a load of bullshit politics over nothing and although pro-wrestling is not really a business you want your charity to be confused with, I think the whole lawsuit was a hugely unnecessary on the animal-lovers part....

..Well, maybe not "hugely"