This week, MLW owner Court Bauer appeared on the Wrestling Perspective podcast. Billy Corgan recently stated that he would be open to the NWA becoming affiliated with one of the larger wrestling companies, such as WWE. When asked if he felt the same way about MLW, Court Bauer responded:
“I think everyone has their different kind of business strategy and I think it evolves. I think, you know, we all go out there with a certain vision for what we want to accomplish, and then the whole landscape changes multiple ways, multiple different challenges, good things, bad things. So you just try to find your path forward and you try to identify an opportunity. Maybe Billy’s looking and seeing, ‘Hey, there’s an opportunity for me in this place to present an opportunity with a potential larger company or something and do an affiliation.”
“I like the idea that we get to kind of extend these bridges open, creating borderless bridges to Japan, whether it’s Dragon Gate or Puerto Rico with IWA or with Mexico and get our talent busy and active all over the place so we can bring in some of the guys from Dragon Gate or sending some of our guys to Puerto Rico, or bring some guys in from Mexico. So I kind of look at it from our point of view is there’s opportunities to develop talent and share talent. I’m just doing it a little differently with the international thing, and I think that our talent benefits from that. We don’t have the weird hangups strategically of, you know, I don’t care personally for kind of being a satellite to something bigger, but everyone has their different plan.”
“I was part of WWE when they had multiple developmental territories and you see how that works or doesn’t work. Looking at WWE, they have an incredible infrastructure now with the PC. So when I was there, you had OVW and Deep South Wrestling, and they’ve had different versions of that since the late 90s when JR. set it up. Does a third party property work in 2022 or maybe that may be something that another company like AEW wants? I couldn’t answer that. But for us, I think it’s a different path. If I’m shopping our rights to someone, whether it’s in India or in the US, they don’t want to hear that. They want to hear that you’re going to deliver and you’re going to give them the best product, and that’s my obligation. When we’re building our network of 60 countries and growing, I’m in it to win it.”
Bauer on his talent being permitted to wrestle for other companies:
“We’re the only company that basically says go get those dates. You are unrestricted to go out there and build out your schedule. Use our TV time to get yourself maximum bookings. Usually, if you get TV time, promoters want you more. If you got buzz, they want you more because they can sell tickets. So we’re like, yeah, go get that. We don’t want to be involved in the booking. We don’t want to create a hurdle. Just go get those bookings, just make sure they don’t conflict with our date, and stay safe and have a good time. I think it’s an important part of the ecosystem to do that. So we want our talent out there. We want Jacob Fatu working from coast to coast. Same with Hammerstone and all the guys, so yeah, we’re all about it.”
You can listen to the complete interview below:
(h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription)
