AEW and NWA are engaged in a legal dispute over the trademark "Shockwave"

All Elite Wrestling and National Wrestling Alliance have been at the center of the most recent controversy in the professional wrestling business. It all started when last night Tony Khan announced the creation of the AEW National Championship. A move that didn't sit well with NWA talent, with some pointing out that there is already a title with that name, belonging to the veteran company. However, this is not the first controversy between both companies. Currently, AEW and NWA are in the midst of a legal dispute over the trademark "Shockwave".

On September 6th of last year, Tony Khan's company filed an application to register the trademark "AEW Shockwave" under the "intent to use" category. At that time, there were rumors that this would be the name of a new show, but so far the name has not been used.

The reason lies in NWA's response, who just a couple of weeks later (on September 23) filed their own application to register "NWA Shockwave" under the "commercial use" category. Billy Corgan's company had already produced a series of programs on YouTube with that same name, which debuted in December 2020. This series came to an end after a short run, but was revived for a series of events in January of this year.

NWA obtained the registration for "NWA Shockwave" in June 2025, but AEW's application remained active. Because of this, on June 5th, Billy Corgan's company formally opposed AEW's application. In it, NWA claimed that they have been using the name "NWA Shockwave" continuously since at least December 1, 2020. The company also alleged that the predecessors of the company "used the NWA Shockwave brand for many years before the acquisition of NWA's wrestling business and intellectual property rights by Lightning One".

Brandon Thurston, from WrestleNomics, has analyzed this case, providing more details about it. "NWA's lawyers indicated in the opposition filing that the company sent a legal letter to AEW on September 26, 2024, demanding that AEW abandon its AEW Shockwave application and agree in writing not to use the name or any variation that could cause confusion in the market," the analyst wrote.

"AEW filed its formal response to NWA's opposition the following month, on July 15, denying NWA's claims and arguing that their application should proceed. AEW's lawyers claimed that NWA had not used the name Shockwave continuously since 2020. They also argued that the marks were not confusingly similar, even though both used the term Shockwave and could apply to wrestling programming. AEW also denied that NWA suffered any harm from the use of the name," Thurston wrote.

The dispute, which began a year ago, is still ongoing, with neither party willing to back down. What happened last night with the announcement of the creation of the National Championship only adds more fuel to a tense relationship between both companies. It remains to be seen if a satisfactory agreement will finally be reached for both parties.