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MLW owner Court Bauer took part in a media call today to promote the Saturday Night Superfight this weekend in Chicago. Highlights:
MLW's relationship with VEEPS: "VEEPs is an incredible premium streaming service. They stream concerts, music, and entertainment, and recently got into comedy. It started about 10 or 11 years ago. For those familiar with Good Charlotte, they launched this service for artists, and then during COVID, it just took off because of the limitations of touring. They partnered with Live Nation, and now Live Nation runs this with the Madden brothers. You go there now, and you'll see a who's who of big bands—whether it's Three Days Grace, Ghost, Bad Omens—all those bands playing live concerts there. They have access to a who's who when it comes to these artists. It's pretty impressive. Part of that is now building out. You look at sports and look at the opportunities there, and we were one of the first meetings. That started about 18 months ago when we were doing a show out in LA. We quickly figured out that there's a future with VEEPs and Live Nation given where they're going and where we're going, and given all the changes, especially for fans that want to watch pay-per-view and live premium events. This year has been a challenge for folks, and we looked at this as the perfect opportunity and perfect partner for us to enter with people that really know what they're doing in the streaming world. Live Nation has just been incredible when it comes to marketing and all the resources that come along with their ecosystem, whether it's Ticketmaster or their outlets like Revolver. So it's been a really positive relationship and partnership. This year has been about growth, setting those deals, and now building out our future, and VEEPs is a great part of that. You can stream VEEPs and access the show whether it's through your Roku—they have a VEEPs app there. If you have Fire TV, they have a Veeps app. You can watch it on Samsung TVs, Google, or on your phone on iOS. They're everywhere. They have massive distribution. You can also watch on your browser at VEEPs.com and get the show. It's really easy to access, and they've been growing incredibly. Their scale has been huge the last few years, so it felt like a good opportunity for us and hopefully for fans. It's really economical. $19.99 is the price today. It goes up day of show, so get those pre-orders in today through Friday because you want to get that value, and we're big believers in value."
Working with New Japan Pro Wrestling: "When you enter into a strategic partnership, it can be delicate because internally there's politics and different mechanisms that go on and the ebbs and flows of any organization. In wrestling, for some reason, it's always weird and unanticipated how it's going to go inside your own house, let alone someone else's house. That said, everything with New Japan since we formed the alliance has been incredibly easy, friction-free, and awesome. I think that's what I love about this era of wrestling—there are so many companies working together, whether they're in an alliance or there's just a casual mutual respect. With New Japan, it's been really awesome. We were really interested in Yota because he kind of fits in the vibe of a lot of the MLW roster. He's defiant, in his own vibe, a free spirit. I like what he spits on the mic. This guy would be really interesting in an MLW environment. Seeing him emerge, especially in the last year as the flag bearer of his company in Japan and being one of the kings of New Japan as the IWGP Heavyweight Champion, it's been awesome. When we started planning this, where he was going then and how he's ascended since, he's come a long way and it's enriched the plans we had. I tip my hat to New Japan. They've been incredibly awesome to work with, fantastic partners, and we're really grateful for their alliance and partnership. It's one of the easiest transactions we've ever done."
MLW's legacy: "I think if I could sum up MLW to this point in time, the legacy is persistence and resilience. It's a very tough business. I remember years ago, I had the opportunity to pick Paul Heyman's brain in WWE one day. We were just sitting in a room waiting for a meeting with Vince and talking about how difficult this business is. He said it is the hardest business you can get into. Your chances of success are so low, and it's just an unforgiving, difficult business to navigate and find that success and sustain it. It's absolutely true. MLW has been the little engine that could. We've had deals where we celebrate mission accomplished, and then a tsunami hits that deal and it gets wiped out, and then you have to dust yourself off and get back at it. That happens again, and then COVID hits, and then this other company starts, and all these things happen, and you just have to find a way to keep at it, keep building an audience, sustaining it, and keeping it working to find the next deal. This year has been a year of great stability and we've prospered. We built out a whole new front office, from talent relations to wrestling operations to our licensing team to our marketing team to our production team as of two months ago. It's all new, the post-production team is all new, and they're incredibly talented. We've really invested in that infrastructure, which has allowed me to go out there and get deals. It's allowed me to do my job instead of doing everyone's job. That really helped me, with the great team we put together, especially this year. Then you see all the pieces fall into place. It doesn't come overnight. Look at how long MLW has been around. This year, the pieces finally landed the right way, and we're able to provide a show every week on Tubi with a larger audience and be able to do live pay-per-view. Having that cohesive content play where you can watch weekly and everything pushes you to something that will give you that satisfying climax for the grudge match, the title match, the big match. It feels like MLW has done a lot of growing this year, so I'm really proud of that."
MLW's taping schedule leading to material being seen much later: "That's one of the biggest things, you just don't know how things are going to shake out. When we started taping in Orlando in January of 2026, the expectation was that we would probably be on Tubi within weeks. We didn't sign that deal until the summer. But we kept banking the footage just hoping that we were going to get there, and we didn't. The alternative is you just don't run, and then everyone thinks something is going on. We were just trying to stick the landing on when this is going to premiere and when this deal is going to get done. Eventually, we had accumulated so much footage we had to start burning it off, so that's when we kicked it off in the early summer on YouTube. Then in September is when we did the premiere with Tubi. Now we've been trying to get closer to that run-up, so there's a short turnaround between when we tape and when it goes live. At the top of the year, you're going to see that. I appreciate everyone's discipline in not looking at spoilers, but we want you to enjoy the most recent thing we did. It aligns better when the fans go to the shows and they know everything is more recent. It is a fun mind trick because things are so weird in continuity that you don't quite know what you're going to get when you go to the show. We have three concurrent timelines in our post-production, and it's driving everyone insane. I think we'll have fewer migraines at the top of the year and morale will be a lot higher once we have one timeline. I know Joe can speak to this, being involved with post-production, where you have to get the red thread out and explain what happened on what day. It is such an intense thing in post to do that, so we're very motivated to get closer in our timeline to actuality when we shoot these things. Expect that at the top of the year, and then that will be the status quo moving forward into 2027."
Tessa Blanchard: "There were no things to smooth over, it was just a delay in what ultimately is happening by 60 days. It went from her debuting on what would be Tubi and actually airing after the pay-per-view, versus her actually debuting earlier on the pay-per-view. It was really a nothingburger. You saw a lot of people trying to speculate what was going on with MLW and CMLL. Nothing, it was all good. Their talent literally appeared on that show. It was just a wrestling thing that happened, and now she's back. We're excited to have her. She's an incredible part of the CMLL roster and she's had an incredible run down in Mexico. She was actually supposed to be in the original launch of MLW in 2017, and we filmed her training, but it didn't work out for that day. We were hoping she was going to premiere by the time we ran beIN SPORTS, but it never happened. This was a 60-day left turn, and then we were right there. I would say it serendipitously created all this awareness and chatter that I wish I could say was some sort of Machiavellian design. There's something about Tessa that keeps her constantly in the conversation. There is talent you have like that, that are almost infectious and you just have to talk about what's coming next. She's incredibly talented and special, so we're pumped to have her join us this weekend on the show and looking forward to seeing what she does."
Finding ways to work with "problem children": "It's something that has kind of been my thing. Everyone in the business operates with a certain code, and you just have to decode that, understand them, and speak their language. A lot of times people don't have the patience or the time. Things move too fast. If you're doing weekly live shows it's harder, and you have so many other people knocking on your door. But I try to knock on their door and get a sense for what's going on and what motivates them. They're all creative, passionate people, and being able to express that and get their goals out there on the screen and in the ring is important. It just takes time and having the right process to get that through. It's such a competitive landscape, so I look and see who the undiscovered, undervalued, and underappreciated talent are, and then I target those guys. It's my version of Moneyball, I guess. I've built a really incredible roster from that. Some of the talent have found challenges or done things they regret, and as a Christian, I believe in forgiveness. You can't judge everyone on the same level and condemn everything or give everyone a pass. You have to look at it case by case. There's a lot of grey in there. So when you talk to these guys, you want to know: do they get it? Have they wrapped their head around it? Have they earned the second chance? Have they earned the third chance? I needed a second chance, I needed a third chance. We all mess up. You can look at some of the biggest stars that everyone's loved in this business, to guys that never got there, and there are not many that are just innocent. You want to see if they made amends with folks, if they made amends with themselves, and if they figured it out. Did the lightbulb go off? Then you give them that trust, you give them that opportunity, and you open the door. You hope that forgiveness is met with roaring success for them, for their fans, and for MLW. It works out often, but sometimes it hasn't, and you try. That's all you can do. To the theme of persistence and resilience, I'm a big believer in it. For those willing to see themselves honestly and fix things and make adjustments in their lives, I try to give them that shot. We live in a time where there's a lot of people with pitchforks and torches banging on doors, and that's it for them. Some people, that should be it. But there are times when they should get a second chance and there should be a conversation. Society is still trying to figure out how to navigate that, which is fair. I've tried my own way, and it's worked really well for us, and hopefully for the talent, it's enriched their lives and careers and given them and their fans another shot. That's a big part of where I want to take MLW and it has been for a long time. It should be a thing that more people do."
Superfight Card: "I think the main event is a match that's just an interesting combination of a major star versus a guy ascending who's just been killing it for us this year and getting himself over: Josh Bishop and Killer Kross in the Last Man Standing match. As that match has played out on MLW Fusion weekly, you've seen the review from Chattanooga where they ripped apart a ring, to New York City where Killer Kross got ragdolled by Josh and then pinned by Josh Bishop. You hear the crowd start to go from booing Josh to actually now fist bumping him and being into Josh Bishop. I love in wrestling when you see that ascension. A new guy comes in, parts the sea, the spotlight is on him, and it's his moment to shine. Does he live up to it or not? It's big pressure, big stakes, it's a big super fight. I think that match really epitomizes MLW and crystallizes what MLW is about. It's the cradle of combat in a lot of ways, where you see the next era ascend, but you also got this incredible talent like Killer Kross who has been everywhere, done everything, and is our World Champion and has done an incredible job as the flag bearer for MLW this year. To see those two on a collision course based on how it's escalated, it feels like a real big super fight. But then you have the debut of Tessa, and that's something that's been long in the works, so we're excited for her debut. Then you have a Chicago Street Fight with The Good Brothers and G-bot. And then you have incredible representation from New Japan and CMLL with Yota Tsuji making his debut, Mistico in the house, and all these other talented luchadors. It's a hard one to pick. It's like picking your favorite child. I don't want to select one, but the main event is the main event."
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