Two weeks ago, it turned out Apollo Crews could lose – his surname, at least – as WWE suddenly shortened his sobriquet to simply ‘Apollo’. Though it’s pretty unlikely most wrestling fans would have made the connection without the conspicuous change, many immediately jumped to the conclusion that the rechristening was designed to disassociated Crews from near-namesake Nikolas Cruz, the gunman who killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, FL, four days earlier.
Dave Meltzer, writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, this week confirmed that this was in fact the reason for the ring-name reduction, having been privy to internal e-mails leaked from WWE themselves.
Apparently, such information was never supposed to leave the company walls – presumably because it confirmed a bizarre, reactionary decision which highlights the group’s hypersensitivity with regards to their public image. WWE originally told The Observer that they had not told any media outlets the story themselves – whilst also failing to deny it.
The upshot for Apollo is that his newly efficient epithet is actually an improvement, seeing as it describes an Olympian God, and not a bedroom philatelist or part of a football pundit (see: Neville).
