The wrestling war between All Elite Wrestling (AEW) and World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) may be heading to the court instead of the ratings board.
AEW recently announced that it would be reviving the classic WCW event Bash At The Beach in January 2020 for a nine-day event that would cover two episodes of AEW: Dynamite.
The announcement came as a surprise to many since WWE had acquired all of WCW’s assets back in 2001 during the company’s buyout. However, AEW Executive Vice President, Cody Rhodes, recently managed to get his hands on the trademark after WWE let it expire. WWE has never run a Bash At The Beach show, per se. It ran a version of it called The Bash during the mid 2000s and it hasn’t been used or shown since 2010.
However, according to a new report from Fightful Select’s Sean Ross Sapp, WWE may be considering taking legal action to stop the show from happening.
“Some within WWE weren’t happy with AEW promoting a Bash at the Beach, and there’s talk that they may attempt to take action to stop it,” Sapp wrote.
This could now be connected to Rhodes’ (since-deleted) tweet where he made reference to AEW heading towards a lawsuit:
“Sounds like I’ll be going to court soon, time to go suit shopping,” Rhodes tweeted back on Nov. 20, two days after the event as announced.
AEW’s press release states that ‘Bash at the Beach,’ was “an unprecedented, nine-day experience for superfans that features two Dynamite shows, a cruise onboard Chris Jericho’s tricked-out party ship, and non-stop entertainment in between”.
The release also concluded that the adventure would begin Wednesday, Jan. 15th, 2020, live from the Watsco Center at the University of Miami. The event is also billed as a ‘beach-themed’ episode. From there, it will continue with Chris Jericho’s Rock ‘N’ Wrestling Rager at Sea, sailing round-trip from Miami to Nassau, Bahamas, on Jan. 20-24th, 2020.
Sapp further elaborated that since WWE has trademarked The Bash, they think that AEW “using ‘Bash At The Beach’ could create confusion between their properties among the casual audience.”
Bash At The Beach was a yearly pay-per-view staple of WCW from 1994-2000. The event was best known for two reasons: the 1996 show saw the birth of the New World Order when Hulk Hogan turned heel, aligning himself with Scott Hall and Kevin Nash – and – the 2000 show, which also saw Hogan pretend to quit the company, only for him to really quit the company and file a lawsuit following a shoot promo from Vince Russo.
This story is presently still in development. We’ll keep you posted and updated as further news is available ▪