AFAIK, the last guy who got to come to WWE and keep his name was CM Punk.
And, well, look at how that worked out.
Well, it probably makes it easier with Paul “Triple H” Leveque in charge of NXT.
“I didn’t get to use my real name either. Hulk Hogan, The Rock, Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels. None of them their real names. It’s just The Business.”
Steve Austin and Shawn Michiaels aren’t their real names?
Shawn’s actually his middle name. His real name is Michael Hickenbottom. See why he changed?
Steve Austin is actually Steven James Anderson.
John Cena uses his real name, but not all of it: John Felix Anthony Cena.
CM Punk is actually Phillip Jack Brooks.
What makes Punk different from most newer talents these days is that he’s been using the name since he was backyard wrestling as a teenager (‘CM’ originally stood for ‘Chick Magnet’, the tag team he was in with some long-forgotten guy named CM Venom), and was allowed to keep using it after he came to WWE from Ring of Honor. These days, it’s pretty much understood that no matter how over you were where you came from, once you sign with WWE you’re taking a new name that they can trademark and prevent you from using if you leave the company. The only people still using their real names are guys who’ve been around forever (Cena, Brock Lesnar, Jerry Lawler, etc.) or people who had non-wrestling mainstream recognition under a preexisting name (such as the Miz, who was calling himself that back when he was a contestant on the Real World, or the rarely-seen-these-days David Otunga, who also made it big on a reality show before signing with WWE).
Shawn Michiels name is frigging hilarious! That’s also interesting about him AND Austin.
What do you think Stephanie calls HHH at home? HHH? Hunter? Paul?
Probably her little bitch.
I’m pretty sure I’ve heard that he goes by HHH at home as well.
Steve Austin was actually legally Steve Williams for most of his life by the way. He’s talked about it briefly on his podcast, he never met his dad until he was working for WCW as Stunning Steve Austin. He briefly met his dad at an event, he said he “Looked like me, talked like me, but I didn’t know the man, we spoke briefly and that was it.” That was the guy whose last name was Anderson. Steve’s Mom remarried when Steve was a little kid to a guy with the last name Williams, and he legally adopted Steve and Steve was legally Steve Williams until the 2000s.
He didn’t wrestle as Steve Williams because Dr. Death Steve Williams was already a known guy in wrestling so you couldn’t have two of them, Dutch Mantel / Zeb Coulter was the booker at the promotion Steve got started at and gave him the “Austin” last name at the last minute before Steve’s first match with the promotion.
However, Steve has since legally changed his name to Steve Austin for various legal reasons. He also appears to have some ownership / usage rights for Stone Cold, because it gets used in the tagline of his podcast and such. But Steve still does a lot of work with WWE on their DVD/Network specials, at special events and etc so I wouldn’t be surprised if WWE lets him some limited use of the Stone Cold moniker.
Ultimate Warrior I think had no legal claim to his name, but was able to get around it by having his name changed to Warrior Warrior.
Hulk Hogan got to use his name across several Federations I believe due to a complex licensing agreement with Marvel and some rights that Terry Bollea has always gotten in all of his contracts due to his drawing power. Part of the reason he left WWE in 1993 was because to keep him in Vince wanted to reign in some of the special things he had in his current agreement–Vince did this because he believed with the steroid scandal Hulk’s size was going to imminently diminish quite a bit (and he did get noticeably slimmer in the early WCW years versus his later years of his WWF Hulkamania run) and Vince as the ultimate size queen felt that a guy like Hogan would never be over without 24" pythons.
In the biography on him on the network I notice HHH’s parents call him Paul exclusively. But Kevin Nash, Sean Waltman, Shawn Michaels and importantly Stephanie and Vince in this somewhat “out of universe” look at the guy behind the HHH character all referred to him as “Hunter.” So I’m guessing outside of his Mom and Dad it seems like most people call him Hunter in conversation. I’ve heard a lot of other people use the Hunter moniker for him.
Several wrestlers are known to have gotten their real names almost wholly replaced by their wrestling identity even by their personal friends. I’ve heard Undertaker called 'Taker and Mark about with equal frequency in non-kayfabe interviews. I’ve heard Paul Wight called Show (he even said in an interview he was fine with either Show or Paul.) Rowdy Roddy Piper is called “Piper” by almost everyone, with Roddy dropped in occasionally. Hogan is so strongly associated with the Hulk Hogan / Hollywood Hogan characters you’d think he’d fall in that category, but from what I see all his friends and family still call him Terry and guys like Vince do as well in non-kayfabe interviews.
From what I’ve read, the only people who Undertaker lets call him “Mark” are the people who knew him back when he was working in WCW as Mean Mark Callous.
There is some idle speculation we may see Stone Cold Steve Austin make a return at WM31. Personally I think there is a decent chance of it, but I bet it’ll be against Cena. Every time I’ve heard Cena asked the question, including to Steve’s face when Cena was on the SA podcast about who his dream match is, Cena has said Steve and has been specifically saying WM31 which is just down the road from Steve’s house would be ideal for it. I can’t imagine if Austin does do a return match Cena would allow Reigns to get into it over him.
I think the Austin character went in some really bad directions after 2001 or so, and Austin personally with the domestic violence stuff but one thing I think I respect Steve on over a lot of other wrestlers is he’s been very consistent that he wants to be able to work a match like he did in his hey day if he was ever to work another one. While Austin was often criticized for his limited move set (not the fairest critique), anyone who complained about his work rate wasn’t really watching his matches, when a guy like Bret Hart says Stone Cold was a good worker I think that’s high praise.
Unlike a lot of guys (including Bret Hart, unfortunately) who have returned multiple times and wrestled very embarrassing matches due to their physical limitations Austin never has and I respect that. But something he has said on his podcast and something he talks about a lot is his exercise routine, and how by any measure you cut it he’s in better shape now than he was when he left wrestling and even better than he was in the 90s. He carries less fat, does religious cardio and strength training and in his words all of his knee and neck problems that plague him for years were mostly cleared up 3-4 years out of the business–probably simply from being rested and all the strength training he does. That makes it seem likely to me Steve would feel he could work a legit match at WrestleMania. At 49 he’d never come back for good, and I think those knees would flare up again after a couple weeks on the road, but he should be able to work a competitive match for a one off.
Hogan has also said he wants one more big WWE match, and that he hopes his current use on TV is leading toward that. In a sign of how poorly planned out some aspects of the WWE are, Hogan has said no one has given him any indication as to whether his somewhat frequent appearances on Raw might be leading to something else or whether it’s just a cheap ploy to put people in the seats those nights with Vince knowing a Hogan appearance will sell tickets. While Flair hasn’t talked about it in interviews I feel he’s being used strangely too, every few months they put Flair on TV but for no purpose.
That’s possible, the people who I’ve typically heard using Mark have been some of the podcast guys like Jim Ross, Austin, and older wrestlers who probably did know him back then. I think Austin actually knew him even before that when they both worked in USWA prior to their both being signed with WCW
Other interesting real names
Big E = Ettore Ewen
Damien Sandow = Aaron Haddad (and they somehow kept from giving him a terrorist gimmick)
Daniel Bryan = Bryan Danielson
Dolph Ziggler = Nicholas Nemeth
Kofi Kingston = Kofi Sarkodie-Mensah
Roman Reigns = Leati Anoa’i (huge family of wrestlers)
Paige = Saraya-Jade Bevis
Sami Zayn = Rami Sebei
Bayley = Pamela Martinez (didn’t know she was Hispanic)
Sasha Banks = Mercedes Kaestner-Varnado
Somehow, her real name almost seems more befitting of her gimmick than her fake one.
To toss out a few more;
Emma = Tenille Dashwood
Jimmy & Jey Uso = Jonathan & Joshua Fatu (first cousins once-removed of the aforementioned Roman Reigns)
Naomi = Trinity Fatu (nee McCray; she’s married to Jimmy IRL)
Cameron = Ariane Andrew
Bo Dallas = Taylor Rotunda
Bray Wyatt = Windham Rotunda (what, you didn’t see the family resemblance? Bo and Bray are the sons of Mike Rotunda, A.K.A. Irwin R. Shyster/IRS)
Erik Rowan = Joseph Ruud
Luke Harper = John Huber
Dean Ambrose = Jonathan Good
Seth Rollins = Colby Lopez (another one who they like to pretend isn’t Hispanic)
AJ Lee = April Jeannette Mendez (and there’s another)
Rosa Mendes = Milena Leticia Roucka (in an inversion of the above, she’s a Czech-Canadian who plays a Hispanic on TV)
Bull Dempsey = James Smith
Baron Corbin = Tom Prestock (the name under which he played for the Arizona Cardinals)
I know AJ Lee is Puerto Rican and identifies as such, but Colby Lopez isn’t necessarily Hispanic just because his lame is Lopez. Hispanic is kind of partially based on self-identification, and there are people with Spanish last names who do not identify as Hispanic for various reasons.
Not that I want to wish injury or ill-health on anyone, but thank goodness Hogan would never pass medical. He’s a grandstanding egomaniac, and he’s not even good at what he’s been doing currently–delivering random promos on $9.99 or Komen (which… let’s not get started on that racket). The one time he’s been used well in recent memory was getting some heat on Brock, and even then he had to come out afterwords and say he was ticked off about Brock calling him “grandpa”.
I’ll agree that Flair’s been weird; he just sorta shows up now and then, says WOO and goes away. Rumor was that he wanted to work with Ziggler (in the sense of maybe a manager type role, not working a match) but they wouldn’t go for that. Maybe when Charlotte transitions to the main roster (which will likely be a dark day indeed) he can work with her–while she works a heel style, she’s been acting more like a face lately in the Bayley program, so the immediate face pops she’d get by being associated w/ a legend wouldn’t necessarily hurt.
I occasionally get the feeling that literally every male on the islands of Samoa is a professional wrestler.
[QUOTE=Martin Hyde]
While Flair hasn’t talked about it in interviews I feel he’s being used strangely too, every few months they put Flair on TV but for no purpose.
[/QUOTE]
“Tonight, in this very ring, two men in their sixties…”
I think they could probably get Hogan to work a match under the same deal Brock has, it came out when the Internet was worried Brock had heart problems (because he gets purple-red even in low intensity matches and drips with gallons of sweat) that because he has a per-appearance arrangement and isn’t working for WWE as a regular contractor he doesn’t go through their staff doctor or medical program but is using the same doctor he was using I believe as an MMA fighter.
I agree on Hogan’s ego, but no top guy in the industry has been able to become a top guy without being an egomaniac. Some of them eventually get cured of it (Shawn and Austin have both been pretty self-deprecating and laid back about their careers in retirement, Bret Hart on the other hand still talks down to all other wrestlers and is super hung up on slights people gave him from his career.) Daniel Bryan did an interview awhile back where he said the WWE was doing a thing where they had all of their guys subjected to one of those psychological/personality type nonsense tests. DB said they told him he was the only guy at the top of the roster who basically came back as a passive, beta male type. They said it was very surprising because they didn’t think someone with that personality type could get to the top of the business.
Hogan’s “strong-style” charisma matches are something that can often be entertaining and require little work (Hogan has a ton of bad matches on tape but when his schtick works it is entertaining in my opinion), I wouldn’t hate it if the Hulkster laced up for a match at Survivor Series or something.
When I was at NC State, a Samoan guy on the football team had to cut his college career short when there was a death in his family and he became King of Samoa.