McMahon being an ass towards World Wildlife Fund

[The Naitch]

Is it true that the World Wildlife Fund was gonna let Vince keep the rights to the "WWF" name but then Vince made some comment acting like an ass towards them so the Wildlife Fund said "fuck it, let's take it back" sort of thing

Vince screwed Vince?

[CSL]

World Wildlife Fund allowed Vince 'limited use' of WWF or something like that relating to overseas/international stuff and basically when WWF continued to become more and more famous, the animal people didn't like it and filed a lawsuit. It was resolved a few years later which led to the 2002 change. Or something like that.

[JimmyMess]

As far as I know the WWF had a 10 year agreement with the World Wildlife Fund that they renewed however many times. In 2002, Vince felt WWF was stronger than the name and they could do just as well (or better) without having to pay World Wildlife Fund to use the WWF moniker, so they "got the F out"

[The Naitch]

yeah I already know about the whole GET THE F OUT part, I'm just wondering if it's true that he actually fucked himself over by going out of his way to be an ass for no reason. It was all over, Vince got what he wanted, WWF remains, but it wasn't enough...Vince wasn't satisfied. He had to put an exclamation point on it.

[loopydate]

I had heard that WWF essentially told Vince that he could keep the name in exchange for a large annual donation to the Fund. At which point Vince decided he'd rather change the name of his 50+ year old company instead of save the pandas.

Don't know how much truth there is to that, but it sounds plausible to me.

[Emperor Smeat]

I think it ended up being a combination of everything mentioned so far with initially neither company bothering about the abbreviation until it got to a point where the foundation was upset everyone assumed their logo was wrestling related even though it has a panda on it.

Vince tried to get away without paying but the wildlife foundation held earlier trademarks over the initials and was willing to negotiate in deals while Vince got to keep his WWF.

After a while he stopped caring about the yearly donations and lost rights to use the WWF initials but also forgot how much money it would cost him to re-edit all the past WWF footage.

He did somehow keep the block WWF logo but lost out on the scratch logo since it was too similar to the wildlife logo.

[Aguakate]

...I don't know if this is true, but it does sound like the kind of thing Vince McMahon would do.

[JimmyMess]

I'm still sticking behind the idea that Vince McMahon didn't do anything unethical or wrong, just that he probably sat behind his big-ass desk and said "why the fuck do I need to pay the wildlife fund, I'm bigger than they are, we don't need WWF"

Look ten years later, they apparently don't even need "wrestling" as part of their name. Although they weren't renting that, but you get my drift.

[Nicky Fives]

Vince is a genius and made the right call..... most casual fans still call it WWF anyways.....

[BigDaddyCool]

fuck giant pandas. The red ones are adorable as fuck.

[#BROKEN Hasney]

In Vince's defense, panda burgers are delicious.