Update On Lawsuit Against John Cena & WWE For Theme Song

The following is from Mike Johnson of PWInsider.com:

A number of media sources have picked up on the lawsuit filed against John Cena, World Wrestling Entertainment, Sony Music, Stephanie Music (WWE's music publishing company) and several other entities by members of hip hop group The M.O.P. that was first broken last week in the PWInsider.com Elite section during my audio hotline. The lawsuit was filed in the United States District Court of New York earlier this month after communications between the two sides ended in mid-September.

The M.O.P. are upset that a sample of their song "Ante Up" was used in the "My Time is Now (John Cena Theme)" song on Cena's hip hop CD from a few years back and subsequently by World Wrestling Entertainment for Cena's ring entrance theme, on DVDs, CDs, PPV, and ringtones.

Two members of the group, Jamal Grinnage and Eric Murray are claiming that they turned down WWE's request to sample the song and then someone working for Next Level Publishing, a company owned by the third member of M.O.P, Daryl Pittman, then gave clearance when the person in question (who identified himself as the President of the company, but was in actuality just an office worker) did not have the rights to do so. The lawsuit was filed after several letters back and forth to different entities involved resulted in an attorney for World Wrestling Entertainment claiming they had indeed correctly licensed the music to be sampled via Next Level.

Grinnage and Murray, claiming they own 66.6% of the rights to "Ante Up" are requesting damages, that they be ruled the proper owner of the song and that all DVDs, CDs, etc. using the sampled music be recalled and destroyed.