15 WWE Wrestlers Who Lost A Name

What’s in a name?

Think about some of the biggest wrestlers and how their names underwent transformations throughout the years: The Ringmaster gave way to “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. Hunter Hearst Helmsley turned into Triple H. Bill Goldberg started going by just his last name.

It’s not uncommon to see a company tweak a wrestler’s name in an effort to better promote him or her. Sometimes it’s about how the name sounds. Other times it’s about merchandise and branding. And other times… it’s pretty damn hard to figure out why the promotion made a change.

Regardless, one trend we’ve seen unfold before our eyes in WWE is wrestlers losing a name, either their first or last name, turning them into a one-name wonder. In some cases, these changes were head-scratchers at first but turned out to be great moves that better defined the wrestler, and now you can’t imagine them going by their original moniker. In other cases, you have to wonder what the higher-ups were thinking, as in the most recent example of the shockingly shorn Mustafa Ali.

Is 'Ali' the shortest wrestling name since IRS? At least, until the taxman's son Bo Dallas has the scissors taken to his moniker.

Let’s take a look as some of the more notable occasions where a wrestler got his or her name shortened.

Let’s start with the most recent example, as Apollo Crews showed up on Raw one night last month and was simply introduced by his first name.

Gone was his last name of Crews, with no reason given, publicly or behind the scenes. For a wrestler who has been in limbo, stuck in a go-nowhere stable like Titus Worldwide, any change has got to be viewed as potentially being a good one. And when you’re left with a name like Apollo, that’s not a bad move.

It turns out that an internal email leaked out revealing that WWE hacked off his last name because of the similarity to the Parkland high school shooter last month who murdered 17 people. The names sound similar but are spelled completely differently, making this an odd reason.