I noticed this whenever any former WCW or ECW wrestlers work for the WWE. Like they'll always mention how Goldberg came from WCW and show footage from his old matches during The Monday Night Wars ever since he came back almost two years ago. They even let him use his old WCW music. Of course Booker T always says he's a 5 time WCW Champion for his entire career with the WWE, which is also part of his gimmick, his WCW music is still used as well, only the "Can you dig it sucka" part was new. You always hear Paul Heyman and the Dudley Boyz as part of the old ECW but with recent additions like AJ Styles and Samoa Joe, the WWE will go out of its way to not mention Impact Wrestling, not even for Kurt Angle despite the fact that he worked there for those 11 years he was away from the WWE. Not even The Broken Hardy's, Bobby Roode or Austin Aries. Oddly enough I did hear New Japan Pro Wrestling and Ring Of Honor when CM Punk said it in his famous "Pipe Bomb" promo on RAW from June 2011. That always bugs me.
WWE owns the rights and libraries of WCW and ECW, not to mention those companies are out of business right now. So, WWE uses their past to hype them as legends. But, they do their best not to mention companies like NJPW, ROH, IMPACT, etc, because they are their competition as of this time. Does it leave blanks in their history and at times comes off as a little frustrating? Yes, but since they're their competition, no matter how big they are, they avoid advertising it. In theory, they mention a rival company by name, people who aren't familiar with it may go "Hey, I'll check it out" and risk them focusing more on the other company than their own.
It's like McDonald's on their twitter praising Burger King, it's not a typical business practice.
But, WWE has done more in the past few years to work with other companies or at least
mention that they are successful in the past. They have brought up that AJ Styles, Brock Lesnar, and even Shinsuke Nakamura were IWGP Heavyweight Champions, without mentioning New Japan itself directly. They also have mentioned Bobby Roode when he went to NXT that he was a "decorated champion elsewhere." And as they brought in the UK Championship, they have worked and made cross-show appearances for UK promotions as they have working agreements with them that allow the UK guys to work the indies and WWE. This was such as case as ICW, where Kassius Ohno fought Joe Coffey for the ICW Championship, and had a Fatal Four Way WWE UK Championship Match with BT Gunn, Wolfgang, Trent Severn, and Pete Dunne, and Pete Dunne, who still works on the indies a decent amount, those were approved by WWE. While he was PROGRESS Champion as well as WWE UK Champion, defended his WWE UK Championship against Jack Gallager from 205 Live in a PROGRESS ring.
