Cody Rhodes Says WWE Is ‘Not Particularly Happy’ With All The Trademarks He’s Acquired, Discusses His Plan to Get Starrcade Trademark

On the latest edition of AEW Unrestricted, Cody Rhodes discussed the “legal nightmare” he’s had with trying to acquire the trademarks he feels are connected to his dad, Dusty Rhodes, such as Bash at the Beach and Starrcade, noting that WWE is “not particularly happy” about all the trademarks he has acquired. Highlights are below.

On WWE not being happy with all the trademarks he has acquired: “It’s a legal nightmare. So this may be AEW’s first Bash at the Beach, it also might be AEW’s last. WWE not particularly happy about all the trademarks I acquired. Trademark law is really, actually basic everywhere but wrestling. Wrestling, you’d think, there is this idea that if you buy something but you let it lapse, it’s still yours, or the spoils of war, wrestling legitimately had a war between WCW and WWE and WWE actually won and the amount of bad fallout that came out of that, I think, is so much larger than the good stuff that came out of it. People lost their jobs, all these trademarks, all these pieces of history. Now, does WWE do a good job as a custodian of history? Absolutely. The network is done well, and they do do some stuff well, but there’s been a lot of stuff they didn’t care for that they’ve let lapse or kind of fall to the wayside, and anything that was connected in any way to my Dad, I just wanted to pickup. I don’t know what my grand play is here, I just wanted to pick it up to have for my family. We’re not merchandising it. I’m not making any money off the Bash at the Beach name. It’s just to have it.”

On how his grand play is to try and get the Starrcade trademark: “I think my grand scheme, and I don’t know if you can include this, but I was going to get as many things to irritate them as possible so they were just like, hey, you know what, you can have Starrcade. Because Great American Bash and Starrcade are 100% his. I don’t give a damn, I’ve had to listen to Meltzer, who, me and Dave, I like Dave, I like Dave, I’m saying this out loud, but he’s always trying to sell that Starrcade’s not Dusty’s. At this point, no. Starrcade and Great American Bash are Dusty’s. I would rather have those than a 100 Slamborees. Now do I have the Slamboree? Yeah, whatever. But I would rather have those two in my heart and soul, and I know it would mean a lot to my mom and my sister, and then my brother if he gets involved, he’ll be trying to print Starrcade t-shirts or something, that’s why I love him, but yeah, that may be my grand play which isn’t good that I said it out loud, but we’ve got a lot of trademarks.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit AEW Unrestricted with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.