Marcus “Buff” Bagwell Files Lawsuit Against WWE

 Former WCW Superstar Marcus “Buff” Bagwell has filed a lawsuit against WWE.

According to a report from PWInsider, Bagwell is currently seeking unpaid royalties for the usage of his matches on the WWE Network.

The lawsuit states that Bagwell was under contract with WWE/WCW from 1991 through 2001, when WWE purchased WCW. Because his deal with WCW expired 4 days after WWE purchased the company, when he signed a contract with WCW, it was under the WCW brand.

The WWE deal “merged” with aspects of his former WCW contract that expired in March 2001, which was originally signed in 1998. Bagwell believes the following portion of his WWE contract is being ignored:

“This Agreement contains the entire understanding of the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof and all prior understandings, negotiations and agreements are merged into this Agreement. There are no other agreements, representations, or warranties not set forth herein with respect to the subject matter hereof. . .”

Below is a portion of his contract which explains how royalties are payed: (It should be noted that the WCW that is referred to in these paragraphs are the WWE brand of WCW)

On PPVs: “WCW shall allocate 5% of the Net Receipts paid to WCW with respect to the direct sale by WCW of WCW Pay-Per-Views to a talent royalty pool. Thereafter, WCW shall pro-rate payment to Plaintiff and all other talent appearing in such WCW Pay-Per-Views in the same proportion as was the compensation paid to Plaintiff for his appearances in the pay-per-views to the total amount paid to all talent for their appearances on the pay-per-views.”

On Home Videos: “The WCW Video Product is a compilation or derivative work of multiple individual WCW Pay-Per-Views in their entirety, such as a collection of videos, e.g., a WrestleMania box set, payment to Plaintiff shall be calculated as follows: 5% of the Net Receipts paid to WCW shall comprise the talent royalty pool, which shall first be pro-rated based on the number of individual videos in the compilation, and then the payment to Plaintiff for each video shall be consistent with the royalty payment to the Plaintiff at the time each individual video was first released.”

Bagwell is also claiming he is owed a portion of the Network revenue because of a statement in his 2001 WWE contract, which reads: “video cassettes, videodiscs, CD ROM, or other technology, including technology not yet created.”  The argument is that the streaming technology used for the network falls under that description.

Bagwell has requested a trial by jury. WWE has until November 9 to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

There are other portions of the lawsuit, which include not being able to take previous legal action against WWE, being able to have his own certified accountant audit WWE’s books, and more.

You can find the entire article, outlying all aspects of the lawsuit, at this link.

Editor’s Note:

I have no idea how all of this works, so it will be interesting to see how this turns out. I have to imagine that this is tricky territory for all former employers of wrestling companies, whose names and intellectual property are now being streamed on the WWE Network. We will update this story as more information becomes available to us.

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