MLW President Court Bauer recently spoke with Wrestling Inc for a new interview to promote tonight’s Fightland special on VICE TV.
During it, he was asked if he’s open to working with other promotions including AEW. All Elite Wrestling has working relationships with the likes of NJPW and Impact Wrestling.
“Well, it is funny, I was looking around, I said to someone in our locker room, you turn right and walk five feet, you have the booker from All Japan Pro Wrestling, Tajiri. You turn left, go around the corner, there’s the booker for IWA Puerto Rico, Savio Vega and over there sipping a slurpee is Konnan, the AAA booker, and so to have access right there to three different territories and open the door and give our talent opportunity to work over there, bring talent from their companies over to the U.S., that’s that’s kind of my goal,” Bauer explained. “And we’ve had great relationships with different companies, and I think you look at each one and you try to figure out if there’s a good fit, if there’s a casual thing you can do and then trying to navigate from a domestic point of view, which is harder.
“How does it work because you’re basically inviting tortious interference. You’re saying, come on over, and then it becomes kind of a recruitment process. We basically have some emotion yourself. So it’s a really delicate thing on the state side level. How do you do it? How much trust do you have, and then looking at the track record for other companies, how’s it worked out for them? When they open that door, does it lead to something where the tide rises all ships, or is it something where certain ships rise and the people are shipped up to the other ship and then they say, adios.
“You also you want to make sure your talent is featured in a way that’s consistent with what you’re looking for out of it and also, what the fans are looking for out of it. If all of a sudden, they’re so invested in their guys in their main event with talent in your company, and all of a sudden, they’re now doing strange stuff and not even really featured in another company, that’s kind of the surge of the fans that have taken that journey.
“You want to make sure that those fans are getting their guys being represented the way they want them to be represented. I’m the guardian and steward for that, and so I have to be careful with that. And that’s a process, and it’s a trust process and they have goals on the other side. It’s very complicated to make that mesh, and at the end, you both say that worked out great for us and you want that, that’s the goal. It just takes time and build a relationship. It’s a bit of a courtship. It’s a bit of a feeling out process. I’m always open to it. It’s just a matter of how does it work in actuality.”
