Court Bauer has addressed MLW’s lawsuit against WWE in a new interview.
The former WWE writer and current MLW CEO spoke on the topic very openly during his chat with Deadline, where he hyped the new Underground programming that is airing on REELZ, and explained why WWE’s tampering potentially suppressed MLW’s growth. Highlights from the interview can be found below.
Explains why MLW brought the lawsuit up against WWE:
There are several things that have come up that have disrupted our business in terms of talent and tampering with contracts. Overall it’s just the suppression of the growth of our business that we looked at. So, this wasn’t just tampering with one deal, one piece of talent. It’s the totality. If you look at the 40-year history and the practices of WWE going back to the eighties … the problems start to emerge. They have an immense market share. They will do what they do to make sure that that’s not softened.
How this caused MLW to lose a streaming deal with Tubi:
I was on vacation and I was just shell shocked. We took the family to the beach and I just face-planted into the sand. For two solid days, I was like a computer rebooting. You go through the dance of media rights deals. There are a lot of wrinkles along the way and bumps on the road. So to go through that and then say, ‘we got to start all over again?’ It’s like you’re almost to the top of the summit and then you fall down.
Says the lawsuit addresses the Tubi deal and WWE’s part in them losing it:
WWE found out about the agreement, WWE contacted a Tubi executive located in Tubi’s headquarters in San Francisco and threatened that if Tubi did not terminate the MLW contract, WWE would cease doing business with Fox and would pull important WWE programs from Fox platforms. Soon thereafter, and just days before MLW content was to begin airing on Tubi, the MLW contract was terminated, resulting in substantial losses to MLW and harm to consumers, including in California.