Court Bauer says authenticity matters more than ever, and he feels like WWE has been overdue for a format change.
Major League Wrestling CEO Court Bauer was on Thursday’s episode of Busted Open Radio and was asked about MLW presenting a more grounded product compared to some of the fantasy elements seen on WWE. Bauer was asked if it’s now the time to strike for the MLWs and the GCWs of the world because the bigger products, specifically WWE, is so polished and over the top. Bauer criticized WWE’s format, noting that it hasn’t changed in almost twenty years. He said that fans want authenticity now and said you don’t see the same thing happening in other combat sports.
“The crazy thing is, when I was with WWE, I said, ‘Guys, we’ve got to change this format.’ And at that time, they’d been doing that format for ten, twelve years. Now you’re going on two decades and it’s the same format. You didn’t see that [in the past]; the format from the ‘70s to the ‘80s to the ‘90s, that changed every eight-to-ten years, so that in the ‘90s it was that ‘crash TV’ format, but now it’s a very dialed-down version of crash TV, a flat version of the crash TV that [Vince] Russo used to do. But it’s still essentially the same format; how you open up the show, you have a guy go do a 20-minute promo, he’s got an invisible wall while his rival listens to him on the stage while this guy talks about his feelings. Like, this doesn’t feel real.
“The evolution of fighting, you watch UFC and you watch all of these big fights, they don’t just sit here and talk about their feelings and not do anything about it, and [WWE] feels very rehearsed, it feels like it’s the same voice coming out of 15, 20 people’s mouths. And I think also, you have to have continuity. If all of the sudden you shift gears, that’s a problem. The other problem is being authentic. In this day and age, rebranding a guy and having a different name after you’ve established him like that, it’s impossible not to have pushback.
Authenticity matters now more than ever, and if you try to put out a fake product, a very plastic product, artificial product, it’s kind of like McDonald’s; it’s readily available but I don’t know if you’re going to feel good digesting it.”
Major League Wrestling is currently involved in an anti-trust lawsuit with WWE; read more details about what the suit entails at this link. MLW will also be in Dallas this weekend for its Blood & Thunder taping; more details about the live event are here.
If you use this transcript, credit WrestleZone and link back to this post.
