Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: bleeding cool, cable, streaming, television, the revival, the revolt, tv, wrestling

The Revival Blast Dirt Sheets After Getting Cease and Desist

The WWE tag team formerly known as The Revival and not (they want us to know) currently known as The Revolt finally cleared the air on their tag team name. All it took was a cease and desist order from the tag team that's been using the name The Revolt for years. The Revival's lawyer blamed dirt sheets for taking the team's teasers and trademark registrations out of context and creating the whole mess.

The popular tag team finally got their long-requested release from WWE on April 10th, days before the company would lay off dozens of wrestlers and backstage talent for cost-cutting measures. Since WWE owns the names of most of its wrestlers, The Revival immediately changed their wrestling names to Cash Wheeler and Dax Harwood, but the new name of their tag team was less clear. Teaser videos and trademark registrations indicated that the team would use the initials FTR and that it could stand for Fear the Revolt, a problem because of a North Carolina tag team already called The Revolt who were not pleased with the name swipe.

The Revolt, Caleb Konley and Zane Riley, sent The Revival a cease and desist order for the name, according to PWInsider, revealing that the four men know each other from the Carolina indie wrestling scene and that The Revolt attempted to reach out to the Revival "as friends" but were "rebuffed." "Dax and Cash may enjoy playing heels, but this is not the ring," the cease and desist letter read in part. "They cannot steal their former friends' intellectual property without consequence. Their conduct is not only unlawful, it is truly shameless that they would willfully steal a name from those that worked so hard to build it up."

However, The Revival's lawyer responded by claiming it was never the team's intention to use The Revolt or Fear the Revolt as their tag team name, blaming dirt sheets for blowing the whole thing out of proportion. It said, "Our clients do not intend and have never intended to call themselves FEAR THE REVOLT. They have at all times and in every way made it clear that their tag team name would be FTR, and that FTR can and would mean different things depending on their storyline and creative. They are not responsible for and cannot be held responsible for dirt sheets and others incorrectly attributing to them a name other than the name they have chosen, FTR. In fact, when your client reached out to my clients 'as friends' to resolve this matter they were informed that the tag team name is, was, and will be FTR and not REVOLT or THE REVOLT or FEAR THE REVOLT."

However, the team does plan to continue to use Fear the Revolt, just not as their name in a strictly literal sense, with the letter adding, "The entire purpose behind use of the word 'revolt' and '"fear the revolt' was a commentary on our clients' departure from the WWE; they 'revolted' against the establishment. As you may know, descriptive fair use permits use of another's trademark to describe the user's products or services, rather than as a trademark to indicate the source of the products or services. This usually is appropriate where the trademark concerned has a descriptive meaning in addition to its secondary meaning as a trademark. In this instance, the word 'revolt' clearly has a descriptive meaning and may be freely used by our clients or anyone else in the wrestling business."

To prove just how rebellious the former WWE tag team is, the letter even said that by "disparaging" them on social media, The Revolt lost an opportunity to work an angle with The Revival on an indie show. Truly, this kind of behavior is a "revolt" against "the establishment." Well done, boys. If this, along with stuff like Wheeler's recent grammar feud on Twitter is any indication of the kind of rebellious behavior we can expect from "FTR," it seems we have a couple of true anti-establishment badasses on our hands here.

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