Highly-rated WWE Raw star undergoes strange name change

On last night’s episode of Monday Night Raw, Austin Theory became the latest WWE Superstar to have his name changed.

During the show, the former NXT star said that his name is just “Theory” now, so he’s seemingly dropped the first part of his name.

This has been confirmed by WWE, who updated their website accordingly, as can be seen below.

There is no word on why WWE changed Theory’s name, but what we do know is he won’t be called ‘Austin’ anymore.

It's https://t.co/XDVO5lgJk0 official! pic.twitter.com/VIzqN4wqlE

Some have speculated that the move may have been made to distance Theory from Stone Cold Steve Austin, but that’s far from confirmed at this point.

Speaking of rumours, Jon Alba has claimed on Twitter that WWE was planning on changing Theory’s name several months ago.

There’s no word on why they just got around to it, but Theory now has a new name.

This was planned to happen months ago. Surprised it just happened now. https://t.co/wcrc7DHwT7

Theory has been pretty well protected in WWE since beginning his second run on the main roster last year, and has been postioned as Vince McMahon’s protege since then.

The 24-year-old is certainly not the only WWE Superstar to have his name changed, and he certainly won’t be the last.

Just over the last few months, we’ve seen the likes of Pete Dunne, WALTER, Raquel Gonzalez and Marcel Barthel have their names changed, the last two taking place just last week.

The four aforementioned names became Butch, Gunther, Raquel Rodriguez and Ludwig Kaiser respectively, all ahead of main roster call-ups.

Make sure you stay tuned to GiveMeSport over the coming days for any potential information on why the name change took place.

You can find out exactly what else happened on Monday