WWE Originals

1st Logo (1985-March 26, 1988, November 15, 2010, March 4, 2013, January 6, 2014, May 7, 2021)
Nicknames: "The Recognized Symbol of Excellence", "WWF in Space"

Logo: Against a space background, the two halves of the WWF logo come from the top and the bottom of the screen with orange "shadow" effects, cross each other's path, then merge to form an outline of the logo (which is a stylized "W" that is "divided" to look like two W's," and also has two protrusions at the upper right for an "F"). Rainbow-colored lasers cross the logo filling it with a gold color that turns silver after they're gone. Beneath, the words "WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION" fly inwards one by one from the bottom of the screen, in white font and with the shadow effect. The logo "shines".

Variants:
 * A short, silent version (without the logo forming) was seen on Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n Wrestling.
 * Surprisingly on November 15, 2010, this logo was spotted on WWE Monday Night Raw as part of the WWF special old-school tribute, but the word "FEDERATION" was crossed off in red, replacing it with "ENTERTAINMENT".
 * On the March 4, 2013 "old-school" episode of Monday Night Raw, a variation of this logo was used. The logo was remade with present day computerized graphics. The "F" was removed from the logo, and "THEN. NOW. FOREVER." replaced "WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION". The logo was also used on the January 6, 2014 "old-school" edition of Monday Night Raw and will most likely be used on future "old-school" tributes, including the throwback special episode of SmackDown with "TOGETHER" added on the bottom.

FX/SFX: The flying words and logo parts; and the laser effects.

Music/Sounds: A 1980s guitar-driven pop/rock instrumental, kind of something you'd expect to hear opening an MTV program during that time. Some laser zaps are heard when the details are added onto the WWF logo, and "whooshes" are heard when the words zoom out below. An announcer says "The recognized symbol of excellence in sports entertainment" near the end.

Music/Sounds Variant:
 * Sometimes, a dramatic synth tune is used instead, with no announcer. Laser zaps are heard when the lasers shoot at the logo, and "whoosh" sounds are heard when the logo and text appear. This was used in WrestleMania III, for one.
 * Another "whoosh" was added for the "TOGETHER" variant for the throwback episode of SmackDown aired on May 7, 2021.

Availability: Uncommon. Seen on USA and syndicated WWF shows of the time period. You may see it on an old video. Was quite common in the early 2000s, when the WWF repeated episodes of Wrestling Challenge on TV. Was most recently seen on the WWE Greatest Rivalries: Shawn vs. Bret DVD in portions, and in full on the November 15, 2010 episode of Monday Night Raw. The "THEN. NOW. FOREVER." variant appeared at the start of both the March 4, 2013 and January 6, 2014 "old-school" episodes of Monday Night Raw. The silent variant is extinct as it was only seen on Hulk Hogan's Rock 'n Wrestling, which hasn't been re-aired in years.

Editor's Note: This logo has cool cel animation with a catchy synth tune. In fact, during the 21st century, it would make a few occasional surprise appearances. A favorite of many indeed.

2nd Logo (March 27, 1988-1990)
Nicknames: "What the World is Watching", "WWF in the Sky"

Logo: A silver-gray, three-dimensional WWF logo with no details flies across a landscape of rivers and mountains. It rises up, and the background is now an orange and purple sky. Lightning strikes the logo, adding the silver details, first to the first "W", then the second, and finally the "F".

Variant: Starting in 1989, the logo became static, lasting only for two seconds. No music plays here.

FX/SFX: More CGI-like animation, the landscape, and flying logo.

Music/Sounds: A guitar-driven, more imposing hard rock instrumental. An announcer says "The WWF; what the world is watching!" The voiceover was done by the WWF's interview man at the time, "Mean" Gene Okerlund. Howard Finkel, the WWF's ring announcer, also did the voiceover at one time, when Okerlund temporarily left the company.

Music/Sounds Variant: Sometimes, a different rock tune is used, and the same announcer says "The World Wrestling Federation... what the world is watching!". This is probably a WWE Classics on Demand invention, to cover up the spiel including the then-forbidden "WWF" initials and possibly uncleared music.

Availability: Was used for WWF shows at the time, both syndicated and on USA Network, as well as WWF pay-per-views. You may still see it on some old tapes.

3rd Logo (1990-1995)
Nicknames: "3D WWF", "WWF Goes Nuclear"

Logo: In the twilight with the horizon, the WWF logo in a transparent blue 3D form, rises and turns to a 45-degree angle and comes closer to the camera as a glowing speck flies around the logo. The text "WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION" in a 45-degree angle zooms out in a rounded font.

FX/SFX: The logo rising, the moving speck. Good CGI for 1990.

Music/Sounds: A dramatic tune with an announcer saying "The World Wrestling Federation. For over 50 years, the revolutionary force in sports entertainment."

Availability: See the 1st logo.

4th Logo (1995-1996)
Nickname: "The Monolith"

Logo: On a stone or ice floor against a cloudy black sky, a large monolith rises up, which has the WWF logo carved out of it and "THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION" written below on all sides. The camera pans around and stops facing up at one of the logos, with the sun in the top left shining.

FX/SFX: The rising monolith.

Music/Sounds: Same as the last logo.

Availability: Same as before.

5th Logo (1996-1997)
Nicknames: "Red Sky", "The Rising WWF and Text", "WWF Box"

Logo: Against a cloudy red sky with lightning, several "THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION" texts circle around to the top of the screen and disappear, followed by a red and gold WWF logo from 1996-1998 (the WWF logo from before, only tilted and against a square, that is used "WWF In Your House" series) turning to face us, slightly facing the left. The text "THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION", curved at first, then straightening out, rises up from the bottom.

Variant: A more common version of the logo has blue, black, and white colors.

FX/SFX: The lightning, rising text, and rising logo.

Music/Sounds: Another dramatic tune with thunderclaps with an announcer saying "The following is a special presentation of the World Wrestling Federation.". For a short while, the same announcement from the 1995 logo was used instead.

Music/Sounds Variant: For the color variant, we also hear Howard Fink shouting "Noise, loud and Raw HERE WE GO!".

Availability: Same as before.

6th Logo (1997-November 11, 1998)
Nicknames: "Around the World", "Flying and Flashing Text", "WWF Box II", "Worldwide Leader"

Logo: Hard to describe, but it had some random images and text flying around and flashing (names of countries, languages, and several "5,000,000"'s) ending with a globe background, with some blue hexes, and another globe at the bottom left of the screen. The WWF logo from the previous logo appears, this time it is tilted towards the right, the square is blue, and the outline of "WWF" is blue as well. "THE WORLD WRESTLING FEDERATION" (with "THE" displayed over "WORLD") is shown below, along with the URL www.wwf.com.

FX/SFX: There's a lot going on in this logo, that's for sure!

Music/Sounds: A hip hop-like tune with an announcer saying "In 80 countries, in seven languages, to over a half billion homes each week, the World Wrestling Federation: The worldwide leader in sports entertainment.". Sometimes, a different announcer is used, and later on in the run, the spiel is altered as: "In over 100 countries, in seven different languages, to more than a half billion viewers each week, the World Wrestling Federation: The worldwide leader in sports entertainment.".

Availability: Same as before.

7th Logo (March 2, 1998-May 5, 2002)
Nicknames: "Attitude", "The Seizure-Inducing WWF Logo"

Logo: This one is hard to describe. We see a looped video of a neon Earth with a outlined sun, the bottom of a ring close-up, another Earth zooming in, crowds cheering and explosions which speeds up faster as time goes on, "#1 Worldwide Leader", "World", "Wrestling", "Federation", and other stuff like that are seen (the words "World Wrestling Federation" are not seen at the same time). The animation abruptly ends and "ATTITUDE" is seen for a fraction of a second, followed by a quick pan of the WWF logo (much like the original, but it seems like a 5-year old's scribble of the logo with a red line underneath). The WWF logo is stylized to have a harder edge, like their product, and is modeled after the Nike "swoosh".

Variants:
 * On the 2001 disc of WWE Royal Rumble: The Complete Anthology, Vol. 3, only the last few seconds of this are shown and the ending pan of the WWF logo is replaced with a pan of the WWE logo.
 * Another variant shows several past logos as the logo goes, the last few seconds of this logo is shown. This was seen at the 2001 Survivor Series event during the WWF vs. Alliance (WCW/ECW) storyline.

FX/SFX: The quick cuts and quick animation of the words on the scenes.

Music/Sounds: Electric guitar riffs and sped-up sounds from the video clips that culminate in a thunderclap-like sound. There is a loud and quiet version. The Survivor Series 2001 variant, fitting in with the event, uses the 5th logo's music (the event was the climax of the WWF vs. Alliance storyline, with the losing company going out of business).

Availability: Very rare/near extinction.
 * The World Wildlife Fund (also known as the "World Wide Fund for Nature" outside the United States and Canada) now allows this logo, so it has a very slim chance of reappearing.
 * The logo itself debuted on TV on the November 17, 1997 edition of Raw is War and made its debut as a opening logo on March 2, 1998 and on PPV on Unforgiven: In Your House.
 * The last show to have this logo was the May 5, 2002 edition of Sunday Night Heat and the last one on DVD was the Tagged Classics DVD. As for PPV's, Insurrection 2002 was the last pay-per-view to have this logo. It resurfaced "unblurred" on the DVD release Brock Lesnar: Here Comes The Pain. In the United Kingdom, the logo is a bit more common and appears on some of Silver Vision's WWE Tagged Classics DVDs without blurs.

Final Note: On May 5, 2002, the World Wrestling Federation changed its name to World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) because the World Wildlife Fund sued them in 2000 due to the pro wrestling company sharing their initials, and WWF's popularity around the world was spreading like wildfire, due to famous wrestlers like The Rock, Stone Cold, Val Venis, and Kurt Angle, among others.

1st Logo (May 5, 2002-2005)
Nicknames: "Ruthless Aggression", "Get The F Out" (referring to the WWE's slogan from early 2002)

Logo: We see a globe, with pictures of wrestling clips, and the brand logos of Raw, SmackDown!, Sunday Night Heat, Velocity, Afterburn, Experience, and Bottom Line. These images are interspersed among crowd scenes like the last logo. Towards the end, "ATTITUDE" and "ENTERTAINMENT" appear for fleeting moments, then, a light pans across the WWE logo (exactly like the 1998 WWF logo, but missing the "F", and with the red line closer up). In reality, the WWE logo just has a W divided to look like two Ws, and with a red "swoosh" below it.

Variants:
 * At the end of WWE programs, we see just the light panning across the logo with "Entertainment" added underneath it.
 * For the logo's first two years, the logo contains the WWE Tough Enough clip, replacing the WWE Experience clip.
 * On episodes of Monday Night Raw sometime between 2004 and 2005, a pan of Eric Bischoff replaces the WWE logo due to his tenure as the brand's general manager from 2002 to 2005.

FX/SFX: All of the things going on.

Music/Sounds: A somewhat calm rock-like tune mixed with sped-up audio clips from the footage.

Availability: Seen on WWE shows and PPVs from the era.

Editor's Note: This one is more mellowed-out, primarily because it was the 2000s by then.

2nd Logo (2005-July 20, 2012)
Nicknames: "The WWE Programs Logo", "The Power is Back"

Logo: We see a black-and-white clip of an old wrestling match from the early 20th century. It is later revealed to be on a TV screen in a large tunnel, with other screens displaying historic WWE clips (pertaining to things such as WrestleMania and Hulk Hogan). Eventually, we see a crowd scene, and the screen flashes. When the light disappears, we see the WWE logo at the bottom left on a black background, shining. "WORLD WRESTLING ENTERTAINMENT" appears next to the logo, glowing red for a brief moment.

Variants:
 * The first variant showed "THE POWER IS BACK" next to the WWE logo.
 * The end of WWE programs use the 2002 logo's closing variant, though larger and more three-dimensional.
 * Sometime around 2010, the footage was slightly changed to show scenes of Gorgeous George, Ric Flair, Ted DiBiase, Sr., Sheamus, The Miz, and John Cena.
 * Beginning on January 16, 2011, the ending section of this bumper has been changed to the WWE logo assembling and shooting sparks on a dark blue background.
 * In 2012, footage of the Undertaker was replaced with that of Kane.

FX/SFX: The CGI.

Music/Sounds: A dramatic fanfare mixed in with sound bytes and announcer chatter from the clips, ending with a sound bite of Jim Ross saying “The world is watching!” along with a humming sound. The audio was changed along with the footage sometime around 2010 with the sound bite of John Cena saying “The Champ Is Here!”.

Trivia: The wrestling match shown at the beginning may be that match between Ernest Roeber and August Faust that was filmed by the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1901.

Availability: Appeared on all WWE shows and PPVs from 2005 to 2012.

3rd Logo (July 23, 2012-September 19, 2018)
Opening logos

Closing logos

Nickname: "Then, Now, Forever"

Logo: We start out with an overhead shot of the SunLife Stadium with fireworks, this eventually cuts to still shots of various wrestlers and other people in WWE's history. As the shots get faster the WWE logo zooms out halfway until the background flashes various arenas. The end result is the WWE logo to the left on a white background. "THEN" appears followed by "NOW" and "FOREVER" from the right center downwards respectively.

Closing Variant: Against a black background, thin grey lines form the glowing word "ENTERTAINMENT" as the screen eases back. When they finish, the text glitters and there is a bluish-white flash revealing the then current WWE logo. The word "ENTERTAINMENT" flashes out and ghostly remains appear behind the WWE logo which slowly zooms in until we fade to black.

Variant: Beginning with the August 18, 2014 edition of Monday Night Raw, the scratch logo is replaced with the new WWE logo. The new logo is smoothed out to remove the scratches. The closing variant was also updated to feature the new logo.

FX/SFX: The WWE logo zooming out, the changing photos, and the words "THEN", "NOW", and "FOREVER" appearing.

Music/Sounds: The sound of fireworks for the opening, followed by a short guitar piece with ticking noises in the background. When the arenas flash, there is some explosion like noises. The closing variant features a rising violin piece with a large explosion like sound when the WWE logo appears.

Music/Sounds Variant: When the opening logo debuted, a hum like noise was heard instead of the guitar sounder.

Availability: Despite no longer being in use, it's still quite common. Seen on all of WWE's flagship programming which includes Monday Night RAW, ''SmackDown! Live, Main Event, 205 Live!, WWE NXT'' and all PPVs and DVDs. The original opening variant debuted on Raw 1000, the 1000th episode of Monday Night Raw and was last used on the 2014 SummerSlam pay-per-view event. The closing variant also debuted on Raw 1000 but it was only occasionally used due to time constraints. The logo was last used on the September 19th edition of WWE NXT. Should still appear on its respective programming on the WWE Network. It also appears on the video games WWE 2K17, WWE 2K18, and WWE 2K19.

4th Logo (September 24, 2018-April 9, 2021)
Nickname: "Then, Now, Forever II", "The WWE Hallway"

Logo: Starting off on a black background, slightly curved footage of Hulk Hogan slamming André the Giant from WrestleMania III rises up from the bottom of the screen. The screen begins to zoom out as various scenes from WWE's past begin to play and the word "THEN" appears above the scenes. The camera quickly turns to the right and goes down a hallway consisting of scenes from the past before rotating to the left once more. The screens are showing modern WWE footage as "NOW" rises up facing the right on the left center of the screen. The camera then quickly pans down another hallway showing more scenes. The camera stops than begins to zoom out to reveal that the hallways are in the shape of the current WWE logo. As it finishes rotating back, the "W"s turn white while the "slash" turns red. The word "FOREVER" rises from below as the WWE logo flashes. "FOREVER" flashes as the background turns dark blue.

FX/SFX: A combination of CGI and live action.

Music/Sounds: A dramatic theme composed by CFO$, WWE's in-house composer. In 2020, the theme was updated to a dramatic fanfare.

Availability: Very common. Appears at the beginning of Monday Night Raw, 205 Live!, and NXT on the USA Network, ''SmackDown! Live on FOX, and NXT UK'' on the WWE Network as well as pay-per-view events and WWE Network specials. It also appears on the video game WWE 2K20.

Editor's Note: A fantastic update to the that combines elements from the 2005 and 2012 logos. The only downside is that the music sounds somewhat generic.

5th Logo (April 10, 2021-)
Nickname: "Then, Now, Forever III", "The WWE Hallway II", "Then, Now, Together, Forever".

Logo: It starts in the same way as the previous opening, but with updated and additional images and footage from WWE's past, on the other hallway showing more scenes, "TOGETHER" rises up from the same position with additional modern footages showing the crowd and fireworks displays (whether indoor and outdoors, from WrestleMania), and when the WWE logo rotates from its same position, a light flashes with "FOREVER" following on it.

Variant: An alternate variant is also used on some episodes of shows where "FOREVER" rises up in the same position from the 3rd hallway with clips from the wrestlers interacting with the fans, with "TOGETHER" on the bottom of the WWE logo.

FX/SFX: Same as the 4th logo, but this is way more better yet historical.

Music: A dramatical-pop musical theme with choral accompaniment and soundbites from WWE's legends and superstars, with an eagle-flying like sound effect at the near end of the theme.

Music/Sounds Variant: Beginning on the February 14, 2022 episode of Monday Night Raw, An announcer saying each word when the words rising up, Beginning on April 2, 2022 at WrestleMania 38, an EDM-pop musical theme was used with the same soundbites and announcing position.

Availability: Very common yet brand new, it made its debut at WrestleMania 37, and of course, appears at the beginning of Monday Night Raw, 205 Live!, and NXT on the USA Network, SmackDown! on FOX, and NXT UK on the WWE Network and Peacock as well as pay-per-view events and WWE Network specials. The variant is used on the video game WWE 2K22.

(1987-1993?)
Nickname: "TWN", "Cheesy Wrestling"

Logo: A white screen appears with a black circle, which fades out to a blue/red/black gradient. As the white screen dissolves, we "TWN" with a star in between the "W" and "N" as well as "The Wrestling Channel". After that, the words "Distributed by" appears above the logo and, "copyright (Roman numeral for year)" underneath the logo. It might cut out (due to the network), or fade out.

FX/SFX: The "spiraling", dissolving, and fading.

Music/Sounds: Usually the closing theme.

Availability: Extinct. Can be seen on late 1980s programs distributed by them.

Logo History
Here is the logo history of the company (excluding the 5th logo):