Details on an issue between Samoa Joe & TNA Wrestling; get the full info
On Wednesday, April 16, 2008 at 3:48 PM EST As reported earlier this week, newly crowned TNA World Champion Samoa Joe is signed to a long-term deal with TNA Wrestling and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.
PWInsider is reporting that an issue did arrise recently over the copyright and trademark to the Samoa Joe name and character as Joe purchased those for himself. This eventually led to some intellectual property issues with TNA, which also wanted to maintain the ownership to license the name.
This isn't the first time this issue has arrised with TNA. Low Ki (changing his name to Senshi) and Amazing Kong (changing her name to Awesome Kong) saw character name changes when arriving in the company (more so with Low Ki the second time around as he had worked in TNA for some time before under the Low Ki name).
It should be noted that there was never any fear of Joe leaving TNA. Both sides eventually worked everything out and came to an official agreement regarding the name this week, with Joe still maintaining all the rights.