Interview: Ricochet on Being Able to Keep His Name in WWE

Ricochet was interviewed by the Miami Herald and talked about WWE originally wanting to change his name, but being able to keep it in the end.

“There was a little bit of talk about changing my name. I had a list of a couple of names that I had written down, because they told me I might have to change my name, which I was OK with.

“I got to keep it, because I already had the trademark [on it] in the wrestling world. I know it’s been trademarked a lot of other places, but within the wrestling world, it hadn’t been trademarked; so I had it actually trademarked.

“They were like, ‘OK, well, that’s cool. You can just keep it.’

“Really it came down to two things. Whether or not they could trademark it and if Vince [McMahon] liked it or not. So I guess things just fell in line, and I got to keep it, which is awesome to me, because that was like 15 years of me building something that I got to keep and can continue to build upon myself.”

He also talked about how he chose his name during his pro wrestling debut in 2003:

“I had a list of names I wanted to use. Ricochet happened to be one of them, but I really wanted a true name name, like Johnny Gargano, Adam Cole, John Cena.

“When it came down to the time me and my two friends…our first match was that day, and we really didn’t have names, yet. They just came up with some random ones — for them two — on the spot, and they were really, really, really bad names, and I didn’t want to have a bad name.”

[He went to his list and chose Ricochet.]

“I really didn’t even like it at first” [but it grew on him, and he really likes it now.]