On March 22 the UFC filed two trademark applications for the term WHAT THE FIGHT?!. The term is something we’ve been using at Bloody Elbow since last July.
In the statement section of the UFC’s trademark application, where companies lay out what they want to use this term for, ZUFFA provided the following explanations:
“Entertainment services, namely, providing non-downloadable audio and video recordings featuring humor, sports, entertainment and pop culture; entertainment services, namely, a multimedia program series featuring humor, sports, entertainment and pop culture distributed via various platforms across multiple forms of transmission media; providing information in the field of humor, sports, entertainment and pop culture”
“Audio and video recordings featuring humor, sports, entertainment and pop culture; downloadable audio and video recordings featuring humor, sports, entertainment and pop culture via global communication network and video-on-demand service”
At this time of writing neither application has been assigned to an examiner at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Part of the examiner’s job is to make sure that this term is available for trademarking.
We honestly don’t know if the fact we’ve been calling a weekly feature—by Victor Rodriguez—What The Fight?! (or WTF) for almost a year now will come into play.
Bloody Elbow’s What The Fight?! feature is a collection of wild and wacky combat sports stories from across the globe. It provides a weekly round-up of slap-fighting, street fights, style-vs-style freak fights and more.
Based on the UFC’s application it seems as though they are also leaning into humour when it comes to this term. However, it seems unlikely that they would promote other combat sports or traditional martial arts alongside or over their own product.
The UFC were pretty active in March when it comes to the USPTO. This is the third term they have applied to protect, joining FUCK IT FRIDAY and THE ULTIMATES INVITATIONAL. This month they also sought extra protect for the term OCTAGON GIRLS, with a view to using the term for clothing, footwear and headgear.
Keeps your eyes peeled for more UFC trademark applications featuring other well-known terms from the annals of Bloody Elbow. Who knows, maybe they want to make a twitter based cooking show called How’s Taste my Tweet Tweet? Or maybe they want to launch their own superhero franchise called The League of Extraordinary Journeymen.