IANS INDY WANK V.4 feat Major League Wrestling

[IANdrewDiceClay]

Major League Wrestling - Where Good Wrestlers Have Bad Matches:

 

The Beginning:

This is a very strange one, in regards to the whole history and who was involved. It was owned, operated, funded and booked by Court Bauer. He had some money behind him because of either his Grandad or his father throwing it his way. The dig tossed at Bauer a decade ago from everyone was all "rich kid/daddy's money" related.

Bauer had a background in wrestling, working as sort of a liaison with the Samoans in WXW. Bauer actually came up with the WXW name for them. MLW was created initially to be a sort of US version of All Japan and to be used as a developmental type league for the promotion. Which at certain times they did work together. But by 2002, MLW seemed to be around just to fill the gap left by ECW. It took ripping off ECW to some heights in the early days. Their debut show was at the ECW Arena first of all. They also hired ECW TV producer Ron Buffone, the ECW local events promoter, they hired their director, they hired Joey Styles to host and commentate on the show, they hired the ECW ring announcers, the referees and they had Shane Douglas win the MLW title and strangely vacated it 1994 style. Which I get if its your rivals belt, but not your own promotion. They also had Terry Funk in a prominent role as the veteran over coming the odds.

 

What is strange about MLW is that everything was right about the promotion yet it was ... shit. I dont know how that worked. It started in 2002. The ring and lighting was lovely. It was lit far better than the popular independent leagues at the time. Even NWA TNA, I say. You couldn't see a consession stand in the background like in TNA. You couldn't see basket ball nets or what the time was on a giant clock like in Ring of Honor. It looked very nice. You could tell they had a bit of backing behind it. So that was a good start. The graphics and logo was well thought out and their website was cracking. And as I will say in every one of these threads, the bios were half the battle won. They had really good ideas, which never seemed to work in practice. The look of the promotion was great, the talent was awesome and the ideas were pretty advanced for an indy promotion. So its a bit of a mystery why MLW was so shite. If you are expected answers here, you're probably going to be disappointed but I'll have a go anyway.

*Original press kit, with a load of names originally dreamed up for the promotion.

 

Assembling the talent:

As above, when you see who they booked you would be forgiven for wondering how it was so shit with the roster they had. They had some cracking wrestlers from the independents as well as popular veterans. But looking at the scene in 2002/03, it really isn't like it is now. Its like human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria when you put Jack Evans in the same locker room with Dr. Death Steve Williams. In 2013, the business is completely different. The veterans of the indy scene are much cooler than the ones from the early 2000s. Bam Bam Bigelow, Dr Death and Abdullah the Butcher just weren't down for showing up and trying to help anything grow. And the young wrestlers just wanted to do their spots and didn't want Samu complaining about storytelling. That's what you get booking a load of vets. If you have 1 ex-WWF/WCW name in among a load of young talent he'll probably compromise and get on with it. If you book 6 or 7, they will all get jealous of each other and wonder why they are doing the job instead of the other. Its what pretty much happened here. The biggest example of this was Mike Awesome vs. Joe Seanoa (Samoa Joe). Awesome laid out a match before the show to Joe, where Awesome would smash his head in with chairs, powerbomb him through tables to the outside and pretty much do a Tanaka vs Awesome copy. Joe flat out refused and told him where to go. Which he should have. And because of this clash, they had a rotten match, where neither looked like they wanted to be there. Joe was pretty much wanked off regularly by the internet at the time, so putting him with someone like Awesome was a mental use of him looking back. Another time, Bam Bam Bigelow was supposed to put over, I believe Tiayo Kea on their second show, and he just stood up and walked out. Really unprofessional thing to do, but thats just how things went in that environment. Even without those incidents look at some of the names. Vampiro, Sabu, Steve Corino, Raven, CM Punk, Teddy Hart, Low Ki, Juventud Guerrera. What a bunch that was. Especially at the time you couldn't fill your roster with any bigger heat magnets. CM Punk hated Teddy Hart, Teddy Hart hated Steve Corino, Vampiro didn't care for Raven, Raven didn't want to do any jobs for anyone, Sabu would get angry and smash furniture because someone was selling stuff with his head on it at the gimmick table. On the other side of it, you have some awesome talent as well. CM Punk looked pretty big time on these shows. His promos blew away everyone else on it (including Corino, who really fancied himself as Ric Flair back then). American Dragon Bryan Danielson wasn't as polished as he'd become, but he was still awesome. Seeing people like Gary Hart, Satoshi Kojima and La Parka must have been pretty thrilling at the time. They weren't the typical kind you'd see on the indy scene at the time. I remember a La Parka vs Sabu match which was especially good.

With the nature of any promotion with a few quid thrown about, everyone there wanted their mates brought in. Steve Corino had the Extreme Horsemen which was comprised of his two pals Simon Diamond and CW Anderson. Teddy Hart brought in Jack Evans and the Stampede Bulldogs (Harry Smith and Tyson Kidd). Samu brought in a bunch of people from WXW. Gary Hart made his grand return to wrestling, and his son worked shows while he was there. Nobody ever came alone. Someone always had a friend with him. It was hard to complain if you were there live I suppose. They had some talent on those shows. Jerry Lawler was there, and even set up a War Games match which he was going to be the focus of. Jim Ross didn't seem to mind loaning him out, since Lawler was allowed to work indy shows. When Kevin Dunn found out about the plan to do a big independent show booked around Lawler in War Games, they pulled him from the card. What was pretty nonsensical was that Dusty Rhodes had previously worked for them, so you'd think he'd be a perfect replacement for Lawler? But no. Bill Alfonso rushed in, in an anti-climax up there was Savio Vega. Maybe even worse, because you had to put up with a piss poor War Games hoping for a twist at the end and then Fonzie hopped in the ring. Dreadful

The commentary was a revolving door as well. It started off with Joey Styles. He ended up leaving. He may have left for XPW. I know he eventually showed up there. Kevin Kelly took his place, but he left when the company stopped running shows for months. His voice was heard on the TV show, but that was all recorded months in advance Eric Gargiulo and Julias Smokes were the final pair and Gargiulo was rotten. Smokes was pretty great, though. He still is when he does announcing for the Urban Wrestling Federation.

 

Concept and other wacky shit:

Everyone likes some barmy stuff, and Bauer was the king of it. As mentioned in the H2 thread, Bauer seemed really over excited about the idea of booking dream matches and bringing in people way outside the box. One proposed idea was they were eventually going to feud Mascarita Sagrada and Super Porky. Bauer seemed to make booking Super Porky his lifes ambition. One he accomplished a while later in the WWE. The man loved Porky. They dropped all of the internet buzzwords such as "Hybrid Wrestling" and calling the wrestlers "Fighters" and stuff. They took a lot of Japanese influenced stuff, like the Tag Carnival. They had a Young Lions Cup. They called their cruiserweights "Junior Heavyweights" and had a "Global Crown" Tag division. It seemed like if they could crowbar a reference to puro in there, they would do. Of course, they had the War Games match. I've heard Bauer lost his arse on it. Which judging by the gap between this and their next show (4 months) they must have. They only ran one more set of shows following the War Games match.

 

TV! TV! TV!:

MLW's Underground (BUZZWORD!~) TV had pockets of TV all over the place, including the Sunshine Network in Florida. It came on at 11 o'clock following Raw, so that was either a great time slot of a very poor one depending on your take on things. It was also on the Wrestling Channel over here, although I'm certain the promotion had folded by the time TWC was first broadcast. MLW only did 10 shows, so the whole thing was stretched out. They did a lot with so little shows broadcast. The TV shows were very much produced in the same way ad ECW's TV shows. You had Joey Styles standing in front of a curtain being all cynical and introducing matches and then the odd angle and long promo. The ECW director and producer did the MLW TV shows so that only made sense.

THE END:

MLW went on another hiatus when the shows started doing poor houses and their reputation (especially Bauers) died a death. But their poor reputation didn't stop Japanese media giant WGO Properties from buying the assets from Bauer for a hefty sum, apparently. I say apparently, because the WGO website is owned by someone in Washington and their website has no information on it. And for the supposed sale, MLW is still around in podcast form today. Like it wasn't even real and someone set it up to make it look like MLW was "bought out" instead of ending up in the wrestling graveyard like everything else. But Bauer wasn't done yet. WGO said they would back him in a new venture called H2 Wrestling, which you can read about elsewhere.

I suppose when you are around all those egos its no surprise when you fold. As I wrote earlier on, its one thing having big names and big ideas, but if the big names dont want to do the big ideas, it's all going to fall apart. MLW is sort of a lesson promotions should learn. Never spaff to early.

 

THE FUTURE?:

Well MLW is still around, albeit in the form of a podcast. That is where you can find an old man with kidney failure called Konnan still pretending he's the hippest kid in town by calling people "fags" and laughing about smoking dope (#boom). Scott Hall's old mate Mister Saint Laurant is on there as well. And of course Court Bauer is there playing arm chair booker, after getting sacked from WWE for not being very good. There's a lot of stuff about Bauer going around which makes far more sense than the stuff he spouts off. The MLW sale to WGO was the first thing, that made all the more sense when you heard another side to it. He claims he's a writer on Eastbound and Down. But PWInsider says he works in the "social media" department, well away from the decision making and creative process. IMDB hasn't got anything about him outside of him attending a premier of it. He also talks about his position in WWE in much higher terms than what he's actual job was (lowly writing assistant, well away from any decision making process according to people 'in the know').

So in a way, MLW Radio lives up to the legacy of the Major League Wrestling promotion. Its still got old wrestlers making fools of themselves. Its got decent talent coming in every week to make the best of a bad situation. And of course its got Court Bauer, bigging things up no matter how much truth there is to what he is saying. At least MLW stayed true to itself in the end.

 

OTHER ENTRIES:

H2 Wrestling

Xtreme Pro Wrestling

WrestleXpress

[bAzTNM#1]

Excellent article Ian again.

 

It always seemed like the wrestlers were always "half-arsing" the matches. I remember watching a Jerry Lynn vs Low-Ki (could have been Homicide, now that I think about it) match that was going at a snails pace and thinking this promotion is very odd.

[PunkStep]

I remember thinking at the time that MLW was closest to a compete package than the other million indies around at the time. They had the cream of the ROH crop working there, some decent American and Japanese names, production values were miles ahead of the others and true to form they had a true 'hybrid'of wrestling, which nobody other than NWA:TNA really had on the indies. I liked the promotion, but it didn't really work out and the stars stopped showing up. This promotion was where I first saw Kojima and I thought he was fantastic, really stood out. I liked the look of Taiyo Kea as well.

[CTXRussomark]

I remember thinking at the time that MLW was closest to a compete package than the other million indies around at the time. They had the cream of the ROH crop working there, some decent American and Japanese names, production values were miles ahead of the others and true to form they had a true 'hybrid'of wrestling, which nobody other than NWA:TNA really had on the indies. I liked the promotion, but it didn't really work out and the stars stopped showing up. This promotion was where I first saw Kojima and I thought he was fantastic, really stood out. I liked the look of Taiyo Kea as well.

I remember hiring Kea in every game of EWR I played as he was piss easy to get to maximum overness. That's the only lasting impression MLW left on me.

[Devon Malcolm]

Great stuff, Ian.

 

I didn't see much of MLW on TWC but I did see that Mike Awesome v Samoa Joe match and it was amazingly shit. Joe actually wrestled under his real name in that match, anyone know why that was? I think he also wrestled with a blonde rinse. The crowd were completely silent. In fact, the only time the crowd came alive that I saw during MLW was during a Vampiro v CM Punk match that was actually quite good.

 

I don't think it helped that they didn't start off by basing themselves in one area like most indies do. One show they were in New York, then Philadelphia, then they would be down in Fort Lauderdale. I still think MLW was a missed opportunity, though, unlike most. It had money, it had stars, it had behind-the-camera talent, it had TV. It should have done pretty well.

 

Oh, and here's the La Parka v Sabu match that Ian mentions, the other parts are linked by the video:-

 

[Benno]

Great thread again. To be fair, I don't think Court has ever claimed he was anything more than he was in WWE, he's always referencing working under a Head Writer like an Alex Greenfield. As for the MLW/WGO thing though, ya it sounds like carny make believe to me too. For what its worth, his version of the story is:

 

WrestlingINC: What made you get back involved with MLW?

 

Bauer: [After leaving WWE] and for the first time since I was four or five years old, I pulled the plug on wrestling for a little bit, maybe five or six months. Jumped into other projects and other things. I became a consultant and producer and business development guy within MMA. I produced a reality series pilot with Frank Shamrock for Showtime with Strikeforce. I've done some music videos, developed some cool stuff. I'm working now with Danny McBride of Eastbound & Down fame with season three airing right now. There's a character played by Will Ferrell that's Ric Flair-inspired. I've done some work with the Upright Citizens Brigade. I continue to do some fun stuff and after WWE, I got a call about MLW's tape library because I've always owned the trademark and intellectual property rights. I only sold the library. So they were kind of still having to deal with me. It was under WGO Properties which bought MLW's tape library. 2008 happened and s--t hit the fan world-wide. Not even in Asia was it a pretty sight with the crash of 2008. So they were liquidating a lot of their assets and they asked if I was interested in re-acquiring MLW's library. I said, "Sure, depending on the price."

 

I ultimately bought it back for pennies on the dollar that I sold it for. Which is the best business move I've ever made. If anything, I thought that I could maybe continue their syndication deals and expand those deals. In the worst case, I get to hold on to something that was a real labor of love for me have that for prosperities sake. To show it to my family when I'm old and gray. This is what I did when I was crazy and young.

[Teedy Kay]

Fantastic little read once more Ian,

 

I was strangely a fan to the bedlam of MLW, it had shite, it had brilliance and although it never seemed to work I liked it because of that.

 

Was it at Wargames where Umaga as Ekmo did that fantastic top rope table spot through the table on the outside? Not seen that match for yonks, and for a big lad that was a very impressive highspot.

[Vegeta]

Great thread/post again Ian, I have enjoyed these series of threads you have been making and hope to see more in the future.

Thanks

[air_raid]

My prevailing memory of MLW was Kojima losing the MLW title to Mike Awesome who then immediately acquiesced to defending the belt against Corino because he'd "promised" should he win, Corino could have a shot any time he asked. Which made Awesome look a dumb fuck. He then lost the belt to Corino, making him look double-dumb. ALWAYS make your babyfaces look like dumb fucks, guys.

 

I believe the scenario went down because either Kojima himself or All Japan weren't particularly keen on Kojima getting pinned for a title by a Zero1 regular like Corino. Given that just one month later Kojma ploughed through the Zero1 roster and win the Fire Festival as an outsider, I can kind of see their point.

[King Pitcos]

My prevailing memory of MLW was Kojima losing the MLW title to Mike Awesome who then immediately acquiesced to defending the belt against Corino because he'd "promised" should he win, Corino could have a shot any time he asked. Which made Awesome look a dumb fuck. He then lost the belt to Corino, making him look double-dumb. ALWAYS make your babyfaces look like dumb fucks, guys.

I dunno, I think that'd make a decent heel turn. Your mate promises you a title shot anytime if he wins it, and you go and cash it in like Money in the Bank after he's just been through a big match.

[air_raid]

I dunno, I think that'd make a decent heel turn. Your mate promises you a title shot anytime if he wins it, and you go and cash it in like Money in the Bank after he's just been through a big match.

 

In that scenario, I agree it makes a good heel turn. But Corino was already a heel.

 

I still think defending your belt knackered because of a "promise" rather than a contractual obligation (like MITB) or the demands of the evil owner/commissioner/GM make you look a moron though, more likely to provoke scorn than sympathy. "Lost the belt he only just won? In a match he didn't have to take? More fool him." Sort of thing that happens to heels being too arrogant, like Yoko & Fuji.

 

Eugh, I just indirectly compared Steve Corino to Hulk Hogan.

[eugenespeed]

Great read once again. I love these articles.

 

I'll be honest, I loved MLW, collected all their main events and got a few episodes of Underground TV. Guess we'll just agree to disagree on that one.

 

I don't know why I liked it as you raised some valid points, I just did.

[PowerButchi]

MLW made Harry Smith and Tyson Kidd look awesome to be fair though.

 

MLW should have been bigger than roh. Ian, you forgot a major component of the Extreme Horsemen. A 250lbs Barry Windham. Thin and fluid and awesome and the best worker in War Games. Gutted for him getting into Super Baz shape again for that to happen.

[Adam Young]

Didn't Kojima make himself look an idiot at one point by proudly proclaiming to HHH (or someone) at an airport that he was the MLW Heavyweight Champion?

[PunkStep]

Bloody hell, I think you're right- I seem to remember something like that happening. I think Triple H may have asked "What's MLW?", at the time I scoffed that Triple H was being a dick as he definitely would know MLW. Thinking back I doubt it.