A few weeks ago, news broke that WWE had altered the name of Apollo Crews. He has officially dropped his last name and is now known as only ‘Apollo’.
This isn’t out of the ordinary. We have seen wrestlers have their first or last names dropped. This includes Erick Rowan, Luke Harper, Antonio Cesaro to only name a few.
A report broke after the name change that suggested WWE had made the decision to drop Crews due to it being similar to the name of school shooter Nikolas Cruz [from the Parkland, Florida shooting last month]. This was initially reported by Daniel Wood of Sportskeeda but was met with some skepticism.
In the latest Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscribe here), Dave Meltzer says that it has been confirmed to him from people within the company that Cruz was indeed the reason for the change. It is said to be a decision made by Vince McMahon.
The reason for the change wasn’t supposed to get out according to Meltzer. He says that WWE didn’t deny the story to him, they only said that they had never released that information to any media source.
Also, make sure to check out the latest rumors circulating about Neville. Read that here.