Court Bauer Wants To Believe a Big Wrestling Supershow Is Possible

MLW has worked with several companies in the US and elsewhere, and Court Bauer has weighed in on a potential wrestling supershow. Bauer spoke with Fightful’s Sean Ross Sapp for a new interview and talked about his company’s crossover work and more; you can check out the highlights below:

On what’s prevented a supershow from happening: “Most promoters, in their idealistic way, would like to think that’s possible. Ego, finishes, logistics, sensitivities get in the way of those things. I, myself, really was an isolated organization domestically by design from 2017 to basically the last few months because when I started out in wrestling, I was broken in by the Samoans, Gary Albright, son-in-law of Afa, got me in. I somehow convinced All Japan, through Gary, to be an American scout for All Japan. I was like a teenager, I don’t know how I conned myself into that, but it worked. In any event, I really loved All Japan. Baba’s way was to be an isolated state. He was kind of on an island to himself. I thought that was interesting. The philosophy was, it’s All Japan first and foremost, and you don’t deal with any of the politics. It’s a big drain, it becomes complicated, it’s a mistake. I kind of practiced that virtually my whole run as a promoter. Internationally, I had great relationships with Dragon Gate, New Japan, NOAH, IWA Puerto Rico, at one point AAA, now CMLL. It’s always been there, but domestically, I just always stayed isolated.”

On changing his mindset around the notion: “My emerging philosophy, as changes are in the wind in MLW, part of that is, I want to change that.” We flirted with that thanks to Conrad Thompson and the Ric Flair retirement show. You had this serendipitous thing where everyone kind of came together for a funky Woodstock in Nashville. It was cool in that you got to see TNA vs. MLW, New Japan on the card, legends on the card, NWA, all these things happening and everything was great. It was like the accidental guinea pig of what could be, and it’s been floating in my mind ever since. Why not? How does that work?”

On the possibility of a supershow happening: “As I look to 2024, I think there is opportunity there. You need the other side to come to the table, but the international partners are cool. It’s just, domestically, can that part of the Rubix cube get figured out? From our end, we would welcome those conversations in the event that there is interest on the other side. I can’t read their minds, you don’t know what’s going on. For fans, they are kind of almost there but they’re getting it on a hyper-local level when you see a local independent show and there are guys from MLW at AEW and IMPACT, and they’re kind of wrestling each other, but without the juice, hype, connective storylines that you’d get from all the groups cooperating. It’s kind of happening, you just need to streamline that thing and everyone needs to sit in a room, have a few slices of pizza and some beer and figure this out.”