As PWMania.com previously reported, upcoming live event line-ups suggest that Theory will revert to being known as Austin Theory. Although it was not official at the time, PWInsider.com has now confirmed that he will be going forward using his full name.
In addition, it was announced during Monday night’s episode of RAW that Riddle will now go by his full name, Matt Riddle. A graphic was displayed on the screen to reflect the name change.
Vince McMahon is the one who came up with the concept of shortening names, and he has been doing so for a significant number of years and for a variety of reasons. Now that Triple H is in charge of the creative side of things, it appears that going forward, there won’t be very many name changes, if any at all.
The edict of the previous regime stated that wrestlers could not use their real name or the name they used in independent wrestling while they were employed by WWE. That was one of the reasons for the name changes, but there were some exceptions. It was reported that in the case of Riddle, it was because McMahon did not want Riddle’s allegations of sexual assault to come up if someone typed in his full name on Google.
