Cody Talks Trademark Battles With WWE, Wanting "Starrcade" And "Great American Bash"
On the latest episode of AEW Unrestricted, Cody talked to Tony Schiavone and Aubrey Edwards about his father Dusty's influence on the pay-per-view boom. Cody said that he is very proud that people are crediting Dusty for a lot of what fans see in wrestling.
"It's great because now all of a sudden everyone's like, 'man, Dusty had a lot to do with everything.' Had he and Vince gone toe-to-toe on the mega event, you know with WrestleMania and Starrcade and they didn't have the closed-circuit concept of the theaters, the only thing that was doing that at the time was boxing," Cody said. "And boxing was gonna get the pay-per-view industry started solely. So these guys are sort of responsible for the pay-per-view boom.
"That's something that I'm very proud of. I'm glad that people have realized more and more his star is still burning brighter vs. not burning."
Cody has filled for many trademarks with some success and some that were rejected for WWE having a similar trademark. Cody talked about the legal nightmare that he has gone through and his efforts to try to recover some of wrestling history that he feels WWE has not.
"It's a legal nightmare. This may be AEW's first Bash at the Beach. It also might be AEW's last. WWE is not particularly happy about all the trademarks I have acquired, and trademark law is actually basic everywhere but wrestling. There's this idea that you buy something and you let it lapse, it's still yours. 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. Like people lost their jobs, all these trademarks [and] all these pieces of history," Cody said. "Now does WWE do a good job as a custodian of history? Absolutely. The Network has done well, and they do some stuff well. But there's been a lot of things that they didn't care for that they've let lapse or kind of fall to the wayside."
Cody has specifically tried to get trademarks for old WCW pay-per-views. He revealed that his grand plan includes getting trademarks for shows like Great American Bash and Starrcade because those were creations of Dusty's. He says that he does not want them to make a profit off of the names but to have them for his family.
"Anything that was connected in anyway to my dad, I just wanted to pick up. I don't know what my grand play is. I just want to pick it up for my family. We're not merchandising it, and I'm not making any money off the Bash at the Beach thing. It's just to have it," Cody said. "I think my grand scheme, and I don't know if you can include this, but I was gonna get as many things to irritate them as possible so that they were just like, 'hey you know what? We're just gonna let you have Starrcade.' Great American Bash and Starrcade are 100 percent his.
"Starrcade and Great American Bash are Dusty's. I would rather have those than 100 Slamboree's. Now do I have the Slamboree? Yeah, but whatever. 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 Starrcade t-shirts or something like that. I love him. That may be my grand play. It isn't good that I said it out loud, but we got a lot of trademarks."
Cody also talked about being a fan of Star Trek and Star Wars. He even talked about his match against Chris Jericho at Full Gear and his mindset going into the match. You can listen to the podcast by clicking here. If you use any quotes from this article, please credit AEW Unrestricted with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.