Toymaker Jakks Pacific scored a victory over the legal machinations of Vince McMahon’s WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment) when a judge dismissed a WWE lawsuit charging collusion and bribery between the toy company and the WWE’s licensing agent.  Though Jakks will lose its WWE license, which was not renewed, it will have the exclusive license through the end of 2009 and until the end of 2010 to sell off its WWE inventory.  Mattel, which has acquired the WWE action figure license, won’t be able to release wrestling figures until 2010.  This will provide Jakks time to come up with alternatives to a potent license that was responsible for nearly 25% of the toy company’s profits in 2007.

Jakks is planning an attack on several fronts.  It has acquired the license to create action figures from WWE’s rival TNA, which though smaller than McMahon’s outfit does include a number of recognizable wrestling talents including Booker T, Kurt Angle, Mick Foley, and Christian Cage.  With the Spike TV network now backing the TNA, it is likely that its grapplers will have acquired additional notoriety by 2010 when Jakks’ WWE license expires.

On Tuesday Jakks also announced licensing agreements with two Mixed Martial Arts organizations to launch a line of action figures and play sets.  Jakks plans to launch the new line, which will be based on the World Extreme Cage Fighting and PRIDE organizations in the spring of 2010.  Jakks’ COO Stephen Berman asserted that “As the world leader in fighting action figure toys, we plan on dominating the Mixed Martial Arts collector action-figure arena.”

World Extreme Cage Fighting (WEC) was founded in 2001 and focuses on lighter weight classes including the bantamweight and featherweight divisions, while PRIDE, which was founded in Japan in 1997, is one of the major MMA organizations in Asia and was purchased last year by UFC (Ultimate Fighting Championship). 

Over the next few years Jakks will undoubtedly discover whether the brutal realism of UFC-style mixed martial arts fighting, which is growing in popularity, will yield the kind of flamboyant figures that the highly scripted WWE has managed to create—personalities who have inspired loyal followings and have appealed to collectors of action figures and memorabilia.