Reason Why War Raiders’ Name Changed Revealed

Never in my life has the change of a wrestler’s, or in this case a tag team’s name been met with such fury from the wrestling community. The War Raiders becoming the Viking Experience for their Raw debut is objectively stupid, and it’s now been revealed why it happened.

As we reported last night, there was always a plan to change the team’s name, and the original idea was to make them “The Bezerkers”, an infinitely better name than the Viking Experience.

Writing in the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, Dave Meltzer explained why the sudden change was made:

“There was lots of talk about the name change, with the idea WWE had already changed their names from War Machine to War Raiders, so they had a WWE name. This was a Vince McMahon call. It was literally a last day thing, where at one point they were to be called The Berzerkers, but McMahon didn’t like that, and Viking Experience is the name he went with.

“Todd Smith (Hanson) is now called Ivar and Ray Rowe is now called Erik. In many ways that was apropos, because so much of the changes made were not to benefit anyone, but simply change for the sake of change.”

So it was Vince’s fault. Who’d have guessed it?

Unless they suddenly make a huge swerve, which they won’t, we’re stuck with the Viking Experience for the foreseeable future. Joy.

 

Issue 9 of WrestleTalk Magazine is available NOW worldwide. Order your print or digital copy or subscribe to the next six issues at this link

• The Viking Experience
• war raiders
• Vince McMahon
• wwe

Share this article with friends