News broke last week that WWE had altered the names of the Bludgeon Brothers. Luke Harper had his name cut down to just ‘Harper’, while Erick Rowan had his name trimmed down to just ‘Rowan’.
Many fans know that this isn’t an unusual thing for WWE to do. We have seen names like ‘Big E Langston’, ‘Antonio Cesaro’, ‘Alexander Rusev’ , ‘Adrian Neville’ and more get shortened.
So why the change for Rowan and Harper?
According to Dave Meltzer in the latest edition of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter (subscribe here), Vince McMahon made the decision because he feels that it makes them come across as more “dominant” as heels.
Seems simple enough. Also, for their vignettes, “Harper, Rowan… Bludgeon Brothers” sounds a bit better than “Luke Harper, Erick Rowan…. Bludgeon Brothers”.
Not mentioned by Meltzer but maybe it is also a way to further distance them from any association with the Wyatt Family. Luke Harper and Erick Rowan are best known for being Bray Wyatt’s lackeys. This gimmick is a clean slate and maybe they decided that it was best to also have different names to avoid confusion. That is only speculation by us though.
Let us know what you think in the comment section below. Does the name change bother you?
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