Former WWE director of VOD John Carlan recently spoke with Conrad Thompson on AdFreeShows’ Insiders show on a number of topics including the process of having to blur the WWF logo.
Carlan said, “Wrestling Challenge, there was a promoter overseas that had a promotion called Wrestling Challenge, and he sued us and won.” Something like that. Any graphics, we had to take it out. I’ll tell you what. The WWF blurring was one of the most miserable times of my career. We spent hours upon hours upon hours. At one point, I think we got the fat WWF (logo) okayed at the beginning. That was our first step. Then, finally, everything got cleared. I’m talking hundreds of hours just on blurring. Not even producing the show. Just blurring the damn show with me or any of our staff or an editor.”
“We would hand off five shows to the overnight editor and have him bang through them overnight. He would do a lot of ECW shows overnight. There were 10, 20, 30 cuts on an ECW show that would have to be done. I would set them up and have him mix them together overnight. Blurring dominated our lives for five years. It was that bad. Those Attitude Era shows? A disaster. Disaster. We had to cover up the bug. The bug to lineup was tricky because you didn’t want to see it pop, and it popped a lot. We had to make sure it covered and then it would (move around). It was torture.”
(H/T to Fightful for transcribing the above quotes)
