The World Wide Web is a fantastic resource. Numerous cases, legal opinions, and other court papers are now available online, thanks to resources like Justia, Google Scholar, The Public Library of Law, and The Wrestling Perspective Legal Project. You can obtain court documents from several well-known lawsuits regarding WWE and the professional wrestling industry by searching for relevant terms.
It should be no surprise that many of these texts contain interesting tidbits of trivia, bizarre or ridiculous accusations and claims, etc., given that pro wrestling is pro wrestling and WWE is WWE. To avoid a lengthy legal exposition, I’ll share a few of my favourite anecdotes about WWE and WCW (which WWE acquired in 2001) instead.
WWE Owns WCM
WWE (then known as Titan Sports doing business as the World Wrestling Federation) filed suit against WCW in 1996 over how the NWO storyline was implemented. It wasn’t shocking because WCW had already given a hint that Scott Hall and Kevin Nash (whose names weren’t confirmed on air for several weeks) were WWF’s invading Razor Ramon and Diesel.
As the dispute escalated, both firms launched several lawsuits in response. The background facts in a 1997 petition about a motion to dismiss made by WCW contain the most humorous sentence of any wrestling-related court case I have ever seen online.
“According to the plaintiff, the success of the professional wrestling industry is contingent on creating engaging characters and plots. Names, personalities, histories, relationships, personas, and physical looks of characters must appeal to consumers.
Plaintiff asserts that WWF programming mixes character-driven storylines with skilled wrestling, but WCW is not known for its inventiveness. TBS proposed inter-promotional bouts to associate WCW and WWF, but the plaintiff rejected this proposal.”
WWE subpoenaed Mark Madden, a former wrestling newsletter columnist, WCW Hotline personality, and Pittsburgh radio sports talk show host, as part of the same lawsuit. Madden invoked journalistic privilege when asked who his sources were for one of his hotline reports.
Whether Madden worked as a journalist became its mess. In the end, the court rendered a vicious judgment against him:
“Madden’s actions in this instance cannot be considered reporting,’ much less ‘investigative reporting.'” According to his admission, he is a performer and not a journalist who disseminates hype rather than news. Even though Madden claims to be “Pro Wrestling’s only real journalist,” a hyperbolic self-declaration is insufficient evidence that a person is a journalist.
In addition, the record reveals that all of Madden’s information was provided by WCW executives directly. Madden’s deposition testimony confirms that WCW employees were the only source of information for his commentary. Neither did he independently investigate any of the information provided to him by WCW executives, nor did he independently uncover any stories.
Madden fails the standard in two additional crucial ways: first, he was not gathering or investigating ‘news,’ and second, he had no plan to publish the information he gathered at the outset of his research. “Madden’s work is hardly more than imaginative fiction about admittedly imaginary wrestling characters with dramatic and menacing pseudonyms like ‘Razor Ramon’ and ‘Diesel.'”
The litigation lasted for years before being settled in 2000. One of the conditions granted WWE the opportunity to bid on WCW’s assets in the event of the company’s liquidation. As stated in the Sid slide, Time Warner cancelled WCW’s television programs in March 2001 and sold the company’s assets to WWE.
The selling price ranged from $2.5 million to $4.3 million, depending on how it was computed. As a condition of the sale, WWE agreed to purchase a set quantity of advertising on TBS and TNT for several years.
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