Kevin Nash Reveals How Much WWE Had to Pay Marvel For Hulk Trademark, Talks nWo Trademark’s Value

On a recent episode of Kliq This, Kevin Nash gave some insight into the complicated world of trademarks and merchandising in wrestling. When co-host Sean Oliver stopped talking for brief seconds, Nash spoke on the John Cena trademark, the value of the nWo trademark, and the problems with the “Diesel” name. Check out some highlights below.

On John Cena’s real name being trademarked by WWE: “It should only be able to be registered, but not trademarked. And then you would have to sign a merchandising agreement. I don’t see how they can trademark it.”

On Oliver’s take that John Cena would not be allowed to sell a Cena t-shirt on his own: “Sure he could.”

On how valuable the nWo trademark is: “[WWE] owned the nWo. So we got a percentage of that from the WWE. The faction makes way more money than “Kevin Nash” does. The nWo was the homerun. If I could pick owning either the nWo trademark solely 100%, or owning “Kevin Nash” in the realm of wrestling? I’ll take the nWo.”

On how much WWF had to pay Marvel to use the Hulk trademark for Hogan: “It was Marvel, and [WWF] paid, I wanna say one hundred grand, to use the Hulk trademark.”

On the issue with trademarking Diesel for merchandising: “You know what the problem is with Diesel? So when they said they were gonna call me Diesel, I said “can we spell it with a Z?” They looked at me like I was fucking insane. But I had lived in Europe and played basketball over in Germany. Diesel jeans were nothing in the States at that time. There wasn’t a Diesel brand. For merchandise, they always had to put Diesel “power.” They always had to put something else, they could never just put “Diesel.”

If you use any of the above quotes, please credit Kliq This with an h/t to 411mania for the transcription.