Fun With Acronyms / Professional Wrestling

• When Lance Storm, the leader of WCW's Team Canada, won the WCW Hardcore Championship, he (in Kayfabe, in reality it was Vince Russo) renamed it the Saskatchewan Hardcore Invitational Title.
  • According to Storm, Vince Russo wanted to call said belt the Stu Hart Invitational Title, but WCW was unable to get permission from Mr. Hart.
  • Similarly, when WWE wrestler Rosey became The Hurricane's sidekick, he was at first known as a Super Hero In Training. He'd usually wear a T-shirt with the phrase written in magic marker, with the left-hand side of each word lined up vertically and the first letter larger than the rest, just to drive the point home.
• Here are some initials that were attributed to Russo:
  • Terri Invitational Tournament.
  • Terri, Jacqueline, and Ryan Shamrock formed a stable in the late 90's called the Pretty Mean Sisters.
  • After renouncing the identity of Goldust, Dustin Rhodes spent a short while in 1998 as a parody of Moral Guardians, representing Evangelists Against Television, Movies and Entertainment.
  • The J.O.B. (Just Over Broke) Squad (Bob Holly, 2 Cold Scorpio, Al Snow, The Blue Meanie and Gillberg). Of course, it's really just a huge Lampshade Hanging on jobbing; it was only ever referred to in spoken form as "The J.O.B. Squad."
  • Sports Entertainment Xtreme.
  • Voodoo Kin Mafia, which has no other meaning other than being a Take That! towards Vince McMahon (whose middle name is "Kennedy").
• There's also the meaning behind the name TNA: Total Nonstop Action. This was actually a backronym; the name TNA originally stood for Tuesday Night All-stars, until In Demand rescheduled their show to Wednesdays shortly before their debut. Since they'd already done a lot of promotion and design using the letters TNA in their logo, they had to come up with something new to fit the acronym.
• Hog-farming cousins Henry O. Godwin and Phineas I. Godwin.
• Heel tax collector Irwin R. Schyster (aka Mike Rotunda).
• David McLane has created three different women's wrestling promotions that use this trope: Gorgeous Ladies Of Wrestling, Women Of Wrestling, and Powerful Women of Wrestling.
  • This seems to be a requirement for starting a women's wrestling promotion; one surfaced in 1989, with the ludicrous name of Fabulous Ladies Appearing In Ring.
  • Another all-women's wrestling promotion exists called Bombshell Ladies Of Wrestling. "Girl Dynamite" Jennifer Blake wondered on Twitter if one lost a match there, did it make them a BLOW Jobber?
• Trish Stratus' T & A: Test & Albert
  • Tina Ferrari (WWE's Ivory) had used the same name for her team with Ashley Cartier in GLOW in The '80s.
• Santino Marella did this once against the Corre by having a group known as APPLE or "Allied People Powered by Loathing Everything" you stand for, which consisted of him, Daniel Bryan, Mark Henry and Evan Bourne.
• WSU has the team of Annie Social and Kimber Lee who refer to themselves as Chicks Using Nasty Tactics.
• The stable of ex-members of The Corporation that assembled for a month against the Corporate Ministry in 1999 was called the Union of People You Oughta Respect, Son, although Mankind only used the name when the group debuted. For its short run, it was just called the Union.
• Palmer Cannon, a politically correct UPN executive who had a brief run on SmackDown.
• WAW Wrestling once had a stable of Juggalos called the Inner City Posse.
• A common nickname for the Andre the Giant Battle Royal is the Andre Rousimoff Memorial Battle Royal, or ARMBAR. Chris Jericho would be proud.
• The Undisputed Era: Cole, Fish, O'Reilly. CFO, the same acronym as Chief Financial Officer. Add Strong and you get CFO$, which goes further and references WWE's music composer duo from the Reality Era named after the original concept.
• Truth Martini is a Life Intervention Expert.
• The "CM" in "CM Punk" used to stand for "Chick Magnet", the name of a tag team he was in during his backyard wrestler days. Later on, he declared that it had no real meaning, but has humorously made up different stories and meanings for it when asked about it. ("Cookie Monster Punk takes no guff!", "Fear the power of Chuck Mosley Punk!", "Nothing is quite as excellent as the wrestling of Charles Montgomery Punk!"). John Morrison once "theorized" that the letters stood for "Craves Men".
  • To Michael Cole:
    "Don't worry buddy, you know the CM stands for Cole Miner."
• Professional Gay Wrestling, a miniseries that's essentially the gay men's equivalent of GLOW above, features among its cast of stereotypes a Gay Conservative called Gregory Owen Peters.
• Summer Rae, Charlotte Flair, and Sasha Banks' NXT trio, Beautiful Fierce Females ("BFFs").
• Elias believes that WWE stands for Walk With Elias.
• On SmackDown to help choose his next Intercontinental title opponent, AJ Styles (along with Joseph Park) displays his new Phenomenal Intercontinental Statistics System. (It's a work in progress).
• In 2021, Nikki Cross took up a superhero gimmick and changed her name to Nikki A.S.H. (Almost a Super Hero.)
• Randal Keith Orton's Finishing Move is called RKO.
• During his tenure as the Tribal Chief, Roman Reigns once wore a t-shirt that reads "God Mode", where the "God" stands for "Greatness on a different level".
• "My Jerkoff Friend" Maxwell Jacob Friedman, according to Chris Jericho during the build to Blood and Guts 2021. CM Punk had another idea: "My Jealous Friend" during the November 24, 2021 edition of Dynamite.

---