Wrestling: The Revival try to backtrack after receiving cease and desist

After filing a trademark for Fear the Revolt and getting backlash from an indie wrestling tag team named Revolt!, The Revival are now backtracking.

Back on April 10, the pro wrestling tag team formerly known as The Revival filed a trademark for “Fear The Revolt”. Just nine days later, Dax Harwood (formerly Scott Dawson) tweeted out a new logo, which is comprised of the letters R and V. Now, they’re suddenly backtracking.

Soon after it was revealed that The Revival were now (The) Revolt, another tag team that has been using the name Revolt for five years started speaking out. Revolt are the current Premiere Wrestling Xperience tag team champions. Zane Riley and Caleb Konley wrestled at places such as Bar Wrestling, Wrestling Revolver and WrestleCon under the moniker. Revolt have faced names such as Young Bucks and Jushin “Thunder” Liger.

After being served with a ten-page cease & desist by Riley and Konley, Harwood and Cash Wheeler (formerly Dash Wilder) have responded in part by saying that they were never going to use the name The Revolt, Revolt, or Fear The Revolt. According to their attorney, Michael E. Dockins, they’re using the name FTR.

Funny how their new logo seems to confirm using Revolt as their new name. Harwood’s pinned tweet says “Resist. Revive. Revolt.” Before the video begins, the words “Fear the Revolt” appear. He’s also retweeted people that use #FearTheRevolt. On May 6th, Dax also posted this logo.

On May 11, Chris Jericho promoted their appearance on his podcast by calling them The Revolt. On “Talk Is Jericho”,  Jericho also directly refers to them as The Revolt,

Dockins further claims that tag teams in wrestling have used similar names without being confused:

"“…tag teams with similar names have always existed in professional wrestling, using The Midnight Express, The Rock N’ Roll Express and The Midnight Express as an example. The letter also pointed out the different usages of the word “Warrior” in professional wrestling over the years, from Ultimate Warrior to The Road Warriors and beyond and that none of those led to a confusion in the marketplace.”"

This argument isn’t sufficient as there are clear identifiers that these are two different teams because of Midnight and Rock N’ Roll. Slapping “the” or even “fear the” in front of Revolt isn’t clear enough to distinguish that its two different teams. If a team went by The Private Party or The Dark  Order instead of Private Party and Dark Order, it’s very reasonable to assume that they’re the same team.

In my article, I suggested that in a perfect world, Wheeler and Harwood wouldn’t move forward with the name and would apologize to Konley and Riley. In the final statement of The Top Guys response, Dockins states, “If your clients are willing to discuss a reasonable and mutually-beneficial resolution, and one that includes a public apology to our clients, we will take it back to them for consideration.”

The fact that Harwood and Wheeler want an apology is beyond laughable. They are the ones that set all of this in motion. Their impending arrival in AEW along with the cease and desist seems to have spurred them to back off of using any variation of Revolt.

It’s unclear if Riley and Konley have responded to this latest development through legal means. Both men have spoken out on Twitter.

I still stand by my statement that it should be Harwood and Wheeler that apologize. They should drop the name, but to act like they were never going to use The Revolt or any variation is blatantly false. The confusion and ensuing legal action is all on them. They’re going to be 0-2 on names to use as a tag team in their post-WWE career.

FTR, indeed.