Back on November 27th, AEW filed a trademark for the term ‘East West Express’ for the purposes of entertainment services, specifically through “live appearances by a group or individual professional wrestlers”. The trademark is particularly interesting as East West Express was the tag team name of Nick Wayne and Jordan Oliver in GCW and the wider independents. While Wayne is now a regular face on AEW programming, Oliver has never appeared in the promotion, with the trademark suggesting that the two may have been set for an All Elite reunion.
However, it appears whatever plans AEW had for the duo’s tag team name are no more. On December 15th, just 18 days after the company initially filed for the trademark, AEW submitted a request for Express Abandonment in order to withdraw their application with immediate effect. A day later, an official Notice of Abandonment for the trademark, which can be viewed on the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval database, was issued stating the following:
“OFFICIAL USPTO NOTICE OF ABANDONMENT
TRADEMARK APPLICATION EXPRESSLY ABANDONED
U.S. Application Serial No. 98285813
Mark: EAST WEST EXPRESS
Owner: All Elite Wrestling, LLC
Docket/Reference No. n/a
Issue Date: December 16, 2023
On December 15, 2023, you filed a request to expressly abandon your application. Your application is now abandoned and we will take no further action on it.
For questions about this notice, contact the Trademark Assistance Center at 1-800-786-9199 (select option 1) or at TrademarkAssistanceCenter@uspto.gov.
View this notice and other documents for this application online in the Trademark Status and Document Retrieval (TSDR) database.”
Nick Wayne has become a prominent figure on AEW TV in recent months after allying himself with Christian Cage and Luchasaurus at AEW WrestleDream. The trio have since taken to calling themselves The Patriarchy and Cage even rechristened his two stablemates last month with Luchasaurus now known as “Killswitch”, in homage to Cage’s finisher of the same name, and Wayne adopting “The Prodigy” as a nickname.