Court Bauer Gives Advice To AEW, Suggests MLW Is The ‘Apple’ Of Pro Wrestling

Pro wrestling has traditionally been a two-horse race nationally, but in a time where there’s more talent in the wrestling business than ever, some promotions have been able to grab a foothold in a suddenly crowded space. Few have done a better job of this than MLW. In fact, MLW may have done too good of a job as the company found itself in a legal battle with WWE after MLW claimed the sports entertainment giant tried to interfere in a TV deal with Tubi. This resulted in an antitrust lawsuit where WWE ultimately settled, reportedly for $20 million.

For a smaller promotion like MLW, survival is the name of the game, and Bauer (who cannot legally discuss the WWE lawsuit) has done that better than most in his position. MLW routinely sells thousands of tickets for its live events, and is currently enjoying a fruitful partnership with Triller TV, where the promotion will air its next premium live event, Azteca Lucha, from Chicago. The event will feature top stars of pro wrestling such as Matt Riddle, Mistico Atlantis and Bobby Fish.

I spoke with Bauer in an exclusive interview to discuss MLW’s evolution, its business strategy and how it has been able to thrive despite competing with WWE and AEW for talent.

Alfred Konuwa: How would you grade MLW’s year in general?

Court Bauer: This has been our best year in the history of MLW. We're the crown jewel of Triller TV with our premium live events, we're doing great with our Hot Topic partnership for apparel, and our action figures are sold out. We're trying to speed up the next shipment from China, but they're saying it's going to be mid-to-late summer. Then we're sold out for every show of 2024 so far.

So to go through and AEW arriving on the scene in 2018-2019, then the pandemic, then to have some complications with media rights deals—which are well documented—I think you really learn what a company, its team, its roster, its entire organization is about if they can pull off the bounce back.

And this year has been our best year in the history of the company dating back to 2002, so that to me is an extraordinary accomplishment. That's not something that happens overnight. It's a lot of diligence, it's taking on adversity head-on and being able to find a path forward and emerge from it and be a better company for it. And so you can't chart a path through that, you can only go through it and have a great team and the wisdom of those people involved and help get you there. So we are freaking pumped for the next six months because the first half of the year it's been awesome.

AK: You mentioned bouncing back and the record-breaking toy sales. What are some of the other metrics that have shown you that MLW is growing and is having its best year ever in terms of business?

CB: We're doing great when you look at beIN Sports. We've become their crown jewel, and we do monthly specials with them and they've been awesome. So we look at that. We look at Triller TV and when our premium live events drop, they're the most replayed, top trending event in their library, which is great. Triller does everything from boxing to soccer to wrestling and bare knuckle fighting, so to see such a big impact there is awesome.

They've been great partners to us, and to be able to provide fans live premium events every month I think was something that the fans had been asking for years from us. And so to now give them something live every month, well, you get a lot out of that. You have a lot of surprises, a lot of shocking returns to the company, debuts, crossovers with New Japan, every show we're dropping something exciting. So that's been a key thing.

But look at everything. You look at the totality of all the data you have, from attendance to royalties, from Hot Topic to people that want to come to the table and do new deals and exploring those opportunities and being able to say, okay, can we go out into big shows and big markets? And the answer is a resounding yes.

Selling out Tampa, having not been there for 21 years, coming back to Chicago after a half a decade and selling out half a month in advance. It's pretty compelling and it brings a lot of excitement to the company and, man, we're excited to go out there in Chicago and give them a show. They've been waiting for us for half a decade and we're going to bring it to them May 11th.

Court Bauer’s Advice To AEW, MLW’s Talks With WBD

AK: AEW is in a contract year with their TV deal. It's the biggest year in the history of the company no matter how you slice it. So in a parallel universe, where maybe AEW doesn't get that deal with WBD, is that something that you're looking into? Are you looking at WBD as a potential television partner? Have there been inroads there?

CB: It's funny, during the pandemic, we actually met with David Zaslav's number two [David Leavy.]

We met with David Leavy and Bruce Campbell at Discovery before the merger and we were progressing along and exploring a future with Discovery. Then, bam, the merger happens. Zaslav pulls off the unthinkable. So six degrees of Warner Brothers Discovery, there had been prior to that merger discussions and looking at exploring stuff like pro wrestling because of their connections with owning Eurosport. Prior to the merger, there had been discussions. Presently, I believe that there's Warner Brothers Discovery, AEW is in an exclusive window of negotiating, so they have to go through their process there and everyone has to respect that.

For us, I think it's a really important thing that you look at how intoxicating media rights are, and they are an important piece of the puzzle. They are a critical piece of the puzzle. However, you also have to realize that as you see what's going on with regional sports networks, you're seeing so much disruption.

Is Paramount+ going to merge one day with Peacock? Those are questions being asked this Friday afternoon after the Paramount acquisition talks are kind of looking funky. So you're looking at all this volatility in media rights where you went from content is king to everyone wanting to spend less. I mean, look at the NBA rights right now. Maybe they're leaving Turner Sports.

So when you look at this, the composite I get is, media rights are critical, but you really don't want that to be your profit center. You want to have a blended revenue model as much as possible so you're not just saying, ‘man, if we strike down on that big deal, it's a house of cards.’ So what I've been trying to carefully structure for our company, and I can only speak to my company and how we can make it work best to optimize MLW and go into the future stronger, is to have a really diverse revenue line. So we're looking at licensing rights, we're looking at what does that mean for us? What does that mean for our action figures? What are those numbers? And in international as well, we're in 60 countries. That's an important thing. So you want to balance that so you're never impacted by just one deal being jeopardized because that can really hurt a company.

We've seen that over the history of time with wrestling. When ECW lost their deal, quickly it snowballed into them out of business. And that's always something that's haunted me, and that's why I think we've been able to endure various media rights partnerships, is that having other sources of revenue has been pivotal. The international deals we have, critical. Now having an action figure line that's thankfully doing great, critical. That opens up other doors to licensing opportunities. So we don't like to hype anything until the deals are done, but we are really optimistic about the future because we really put a lot of time to the strategies of where we're placed today and where we're going tomorrow.

AK: My follow-up question was going to be about the media rights deals and how we may be in the last couple of years of seeing these big deals, because it's like a big star collapsing upon itself. But that's a perfect answer in terms of differentiating your business and having to do that I think has made you a better businessman with MLW.

CB: I always try to be the most... I would look at everything very conservatively and not in the eye of, ‘well, this is just going to be the transformative event, let's go in, let's go for it.’ That could work out, but let's assume it doesn't and let's prepare accordingly. Let's be as judicious as possible with the business. High risk, high reward is true. A lot of companies go out of business that way. For us, I think it's be very cautious with every partnership, every deal, and we want them to be fruitful, we want them to be a huge success.

But you also want your company to be around. No one was talking about media rights in the sixties, seventies and eighties for NFL and baseball. That became such a hot thing at the end of the century into the 21st century. But like any trend, it ends. And so what are these leagues going to do? At some point you're going to look at direct to consumer scenarios, you're going to look at some of these, I think it was ESPN that approached the NFL, and then maybe baseball, maybe NBA, about possibly having an ownership stake and being partners in this thing.

So it's going to be a different world and there's no stopping it. You've just got to be trying to be ahead of the curve and ride the crest of the wave into the future. Easier said than done, but as long as you kind of hedge your bets, and you've got your things spread out across the landscape, then you really can't be too exposed to the problems. But if you just try to follow the trends, you're going to sometimes follow them off a cliff.

AK: Okay. So given what you've said, I'm looking at AEW and they're in danger of exactly what you said, of being too dependent on a TV deal. All I hear is ‘if they don't get this great TV deal, it’s going to really hurt them.’ So what—specifically—would be your advice to a Tony Khan in terms of differentiating so they aren’t strictly relying on TV deals?

CB: They've done a great job of establishing AEW as a challenger league over the years and being very noisy and being very big and they've had a lot of success. I think if I was a member of their organization, I guess my thinking would be something like leverage. Where's your leverage? And use it to the maximum benefit. And you definitely want to always have leverage. Deals and partnerships and success is based on leverage. Do you have it or do they have it? And once you know that, that kind of defines your next steps and what you need to do or what you need to be thinking about beyond that dialogue you're having with the other side.

Now, they may also be in a position where it's just a matter of days before a new deal is announced. There's upfronts coming up for Warner Brothers Discovery. That's usually when you announce your slate for the fall, you're selling it to advertisers. So this all could be for nothing. I can't forecast anyone else's future. My job is to just forecast our future to the best of our ability. We want to follow their successes and their challenges because those are possibly scenarios we'll be looking at in different shapes and different forms.

But I really do commend them for all the success they've had. I think a lot of people, it's an easy position to always just jump on someone and play Monday morning quarterback. So I don't have all the information on what's going on over there, so I can't really say firmly that they are in jeopardy or they're not. They might be set for the next eight years and none of us know it, so I'm just worried about me.

You know what? I'll tell you this, that's the one thing that promoters can get really jammed into is tracking everyone else and then looking over on the other side of the fence and trying to keep up... Keeping Up with the Joneses can be a really dangerous game of chicken to play. So you track them, you want to see what's working, what's not working, but then you've got to realize, the main thing's the main thing, and my thing's the main thing for me.

AK: There's so many wrestling companies out there with so many platforms that free agents are hard to come by in terms of name-brand free agents and building up talent. So what is your strategy when it comes to free agency in this climate of wrestling?

MLW’s Free Agent Strategy

CB: They've got to fit within the fabric of the product I want to put out there. I want them to be authentic. I want there to be in some of these guys a quality of danger. I've always liked that in our talent, not everyone, but through the generations of MLW, from the 2002 class to the 2003 class of guys like Terry Funk and Abdullah the Butcher and those kind of guys to the new generation where you look at the 2019 class, that Jacob Fatu. I always love those qualities of guys that feel dangerous. And I think you look at that within the talent you're developing.

And in the free agent list, we haven't been able to be as aggressive in the past as we are now in that space, and now are. We look at every free agent and we assess if there's an opportunity for us to get in there and have a conversation. And we've been really happy with how that's worked out for us, with Matt Riddle, for example. Bringing him in has been huge, huge get for us.

And then having strategic partnerships. CMLL, New Japan, that partnership has been so rewarding for us, for our fans, and hopefully for them as well. I mean to have MLW's World Middleweight title defended now twice in Arena Mexico in December, then recently in March, is huge. And for MLW title fights to be broadcast on New Japan world, huge. And to have Kojima, the first ever MLW World Heavyweight Champion return to that place later to win the title this year is one of my favorite stories ever. And he's just such a wonderful guy to represent and run with the MLW flag. So all this has been great. It's a combination of free agency, the ability to engage in free agency at a high level, and then mix it up with these partnerships, all have been awesome for us.

Bauer On Jacob Fatu, MLW As The Apple Of Wrestling

AK: In the scale of the Anoa'i or Samoan dynasty, whatever, where would you rank Jacob Fatu? Because I have him near the top.

Well, I would say you got to give it up to the Rock, Dwayne Johnson. He’s a once-in-a-lifetime performer and a force of nature. And then right under him, you look at—for me—it's a two-way tie with Eki Fatu, also known as Umaga, and Jacob Fatu. Just very similar. Umaga was much bigger. Having worked with Eki, we created the Umaga character together. And to see him take off on a main event level, you just knew he needed the break and he got it and ran with it. Jacob Fatu has been in the business for a while. Before MLW, he was going up and down the west coast for years and that was about it. So, to be able to put him on a platform where he was the guy in MLW for five or six years—he handled the pressure great and he was phenomenal.

AK: Let’s have a little fun before we get out of here. The Streets tell me that AEW is the Pepsi of pro wrestling. What does that make MLW?

CB: I think Steve Jobs had this great mantra when he was doing all his amazing things with Apple, and it was simple: Think Different. So when I think what our mantra is, and what we try do everyday, it’s just “Think Different.” Don’t try to mimic, don’t try to replicate, just Think Different. What if you tried something new? I try to look at things in a positive way. It’s so tempting in wrestling to look at the drama, because everything in wrestling is drama, and I just try to think different and stay away from all that stuff, the main thing is the main thing.

MLW Azteca Lucha, from the Cicero Arena in Chicago, Ill., airs this Saturday, May 11, 2024 at 7:00pm PST.