Select Answers: WWE trademarks, Pete Dunne, Dual Contracts

Welcome to Select Answers, a short feature that provides some of the answers to questions that were posed to Sean Ross Sapp in the most recent Fightful Weekly Q&A Podcast. The show drops every week on Fightful Select for subscribers.

When aggregating these posts please refer to it as "Fightful Select Answers Q&A" and tag Fightful, noting that it was in the Q&A format to avoid confusion.

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Hi Sean, what's the latest on Pete Dunne's contract status? Last I heard he was doing some coaching/production work for Speed but with that disappearing, coupled with his appearance at Riot Cabaret, I couldn't help but speculate, and rather than assume, would rather ask an expert! Thanks!

When I asked WWE sources, they said he was still under contract. He's been portraying an additional El Grande Americano. When Corey Brennan asked Riot Cabaret about his appearance, they indicated that they'd been working on it for a very long time and that it would take a lot more work to get him to have a match there.

Have u heard of any more people from either CMLL or NJPW who have dual contracts from AEW?

I haven't heard of specific names, I've just heard that this is going to be fairly common moving forward as AEW, CMLL, NJPW look to retain talent and work together. This was actually something I'd mentioned on air in 2018 as something I'd expected ROH and NJPW to do in order to compete financially with WWE. That didn't end up happening, and AEW ended up happening.

hey sean, i remember seeing a few weeks ago that wwe filed a new trademark claim on the name “scott dawson.” does wwe still own the name “the revival?” also, does wwe file trademark claims on all former superstar names, or just big stars like ftr? i think i remember they made some kind of deal with cody rhodes to let him use the rhodes name in aew after he had gone by just “cody” for years.

Yes, WWE still owns that. Dax and Cash had actually procured a bunch of trademarks and they were effectively used as leverage in order for WWE to not extend their deals due to injury time. I'm not sure what exactly led to Cody getting his last name back, but that was a wild one. Cody Runnels is his real name, so because he used Cody Rhodes, he couldn't take the in-ring last name with him. However, because Brandi was "Eden Stiles" in WWE, she was free to use the "Brandi Rhodes." This allowed companies to promote them as "Cody & Brandi Rhodes," which was clever.