Bill Apter Comments On Vince McMahon Wanting To Own WWE Characters
WWE’s obsession with owning character names is not a new phenomenon
Legendary wrestling journalist Bill Apter recently spoke with the Wrestling With History podcast, with the PWI owner talking about Vince McMahon’s obsession with owning character IPs:
“Vince is looking - and this is not in defence of Vince - I know in terms where he wants to take his business. He wants to trademark a Tony Atlas, change him into a character, make merchandise with him on it – he can’t own the Tony Atlas person but he can own Saba Simba. He can own Akeem [instead] of One Man Gang, etc. So his plan moving forward was to create cartoon like characters that he could not only have wrestle, but merchandise as well.”
While on the most part this is true with regards to a wrestler’s name, there are notable exceptions to the rule, like the late great Dusty Rhodes. However, McMahon found ways to own ‘WWE’s version’ of The American Dream:
“With Dusty, as much disrespect as there was in that, that whole polka dot gimmick to him was in that whole cartoon vein of selling merchandise and branding it that way. He didn’t really care about the wrestling fan, he was trying to rebrand wrestling as entertainment.”
