Vince McMahon Almost Renamed WWE to “WE” After Lawsuit Loss

Former WWE Creative Director of On-Air Promotions David Sahadi just pulled the curtain back on a wild chapter in WWE history—and revealed that Vince McMahon nearly rebranded the company as simply “WE.”

During his interview with Wrestling Epicenter, Sahadi discussed the WWF-to-WWE name change that happened after the company lost a legal battle with the World Wildlife Fund. While most fans remember the iconic “Get the F Out” campaign, Sahadi revealed just how strange things got behind the scenes.

“At one point when we were making the logo change, Vince wanted it just called WE – like World Entertainment,” Sahadi said. “And I’m just like, ‘It doesn’t kind of work – WE.’ That conversation lasted for about a month before we settled on WWE. I kid you not. It just made no sense.”

He added that he always preferred the original name, saying, “It was World Wrestling Federation back then. I missed that term, Federation. That sounds so cool. There’s a Star Trek sense to it, you know.”

According to Sahadi, the legal fight with the World Wildlife Fund had been going on for over a decade, but it wasn’t until WWE fully embraced its wildest era that things tipped.

“There was advanced warning, I believe. I’m not sure about this, but I believe they’d been suing us—the World Wildlife Foundation—for over a decade, and they weren’t winning. But that was the era when they finally won, when we were getting very salacious,” he explained.

“We were getting out there. We had Degeneration X. We were crossing lines. We were doing R-rated stuff—things that hadn’t been done before.”

Sahadi admitted he still misses that kind of content, adding, “I really do. I miss the R-rated stuff, when we were doing things nobody had done before—breaking down walls, crossing barriers, entering new frontiers, and just pushing the envelope as far as we could.”

He believes that once the company leaned too far into controversy, that’s when the court finally turned against them. “I think that’s when they finally got the verdict in their favor, because some people thought it was lewd and lascivious. That’s when I think they finally got their redemption and got us to take the F out.”

It’s wild to think how different things could’ve been if “WE” had made it to TV instead of “WWE.” In the end, fans got to “Get the F Out”—and the brand never looked back.