17 WWE Superstars Who Mysteriously Lost A Name

One of the oddest things that WWE habitually does is the calculated excision of people's names. The assumption seems to be that it's easier to market a single name, but come on. Steve Austin, Hulk Hogan and John Cena all made plenty of money for the company despite the apparent albatross of two names dragging them each down. So even though there are a million examples of successful wrestlers with real people names, there are plenty of examples of names that were mangled in the name of marketing.

Sure, sometimes it makes sense, and sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes it's clearly a product of the WWE marketing machine, and sometimes it's something done by another company. In any case, reader, I have enlisted the twin weapons of the internet columnist -- exhaustive research and irresponsible speculation -- to bring you explanations for these decisions. 

Now, click on; you can learn about what happened to the missing surnames of forgotten midcarders from ten years ago, and you'll finally be able to sleep again. 

Bill Goldberg originally wanted to be called "The Hybrid", which was a much more intimidating sounding name before the most common connotation was high-efficiency automobiles. Back in 1998, people would have heard "Hybrid" and assumed this big bald sucker was secretly a jackalope or whatever. But they decided that they could better play up his NFL career if they brought him in as regular old Bill Goldberg, former Atlanta Falcon.

However, they still wanted to market him as this absolute force of nature who just steamrolls through opponents, and forces of nature don't have names like "Bill". Well, maybe hurricanes might, but you get the idea. Dropping the first name made Goldberg an entity, not just a wrestler. Unfortunately, the success WCW had in marketing GOLDBERG as a concept is probably the root cause of most of the other examples on this list.