Bad Bunny appears with nostalgic jacket at SmackDown

The Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny has recently caused controversy with his most recent performance at SmackDown Live, the American entertainment company WWE's weekly wrestling show.

In addition to his rap career, Bad Bunny is also a professional wrestler. At the last wrestling show in his home country, the rapper appeared with a nostalgic jacket, which still featured WWE's old logo. That old logo consists of the letter W and F linked together, referring to WWE's name as used at the time: WWF, an acronym for World Wrestling Federation.

Bad Bunny in fight with WWE

Apparently, Bad Bunny could not count on Vince McMahon’s sympathy, who is the owner of the WWE. In the media they were even talking about possibly suspending Bad Bunny, although this has not been officially confirmed yet. The use of the old logo is sensitive for the WWE: the name change to World Wrestling Entertainment was not a free choice but,  it derived from a legal dispute with the World Wide Fund for Nature, the well-known nature organization that also uses the acronym WWF.

Initially, the organization was founded as the World Wildlife Fund but, the name was soon changed to clarify that the organization also wants to protect animal habitats and not just animals on their own. However, the acronym WWF was retained.

Wrestling organization wrestles with agreement

The two parties were able to work out an amicable agreement in 1994. After some time, the wrestling federation began to disregard that agreement. Especially, the registration of the domain name "wwf.com" and the new logo that the wrestling federation started using (and it is exactly that logo that Bad Bunny wore on his jacket) were not acceptable for the nature organization.

Eventually, that conflict led to legal proceedings which were won by the nature organization in 2002, as it was ruled that the wrestling federation had infringed the agreement between the two parties.

Bad Bunny, Bad Procedure

Since then, the WWE has been very careful with the use of the old name and accompanying logo. The WWE has responded by censoring the jacket in videos of the event on social media. However, the approach in doing so is inconsistent, as the WWE has posted uncensored photos online in which the old logo is still clearly visible. It is possible that the WWE will face another legal proceeding thanks to Bad Bunny....

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