MLW launches lawsuit against WWE for Anti-Trust

[Tom Guycott]

Originally Posted by Supreme Olajuwon The conduct alleged in the complaint seems like something we all know to be true: WWE wants to crush their competition. It’s based upon statements made by WWE leadership who will likely deny they ever said it and corroborated by media company members who have previously bent to WWE’s will so they’ll also probably deny it was said. Seems like a long shot. But should at least get to the deposition phase which should be fun.

Originally Posted by Supreme Olajuwon It’ll be interesting to me to see that if Vice and Tubi did indeed have deals ready for MLW and then pulled the plug, what their explanations for killing the deal will be.

This would be interesting indeed.

Also, I love WWE's assertation over the years that nobody is competition... except for when they are competition, and all the weird mental and legal gymnastics they pull to rationalize that. Like the thing they've done for decades to say "Hey, we do business with [venue], and if you keep wanting to get big bank from us having events here, you can't book any other wrestling shows. Also, though, we aren't wrestling." That has cut nuts off of MANY promotions, large and small, all over the place. They pulled NXT from being an exclusive thing to get a subscription to The WWE Network for, and made it a TV show to deliberately fuck with AEW.

TNA/Impact was "corporation non grata" except for the current thing with Mickie James, that one week where RVD showed up in both places, and the one-time, under-the-table exchange between Ric Flair and Christian. They will prob'ly point to these essentially isolated incidents, and possibly their two public co-minglings with ECW (the 1998 "invasion", and the time they gave Taz permission to win the belt from Mike Awesome) as how they have been totally fair to everyone for decades.

However, it would be funny if this was indeed a provable thing and is what finally brings WWE to heel. I'm not saying this like I'm salivating over the prospect. I just mean that after they stomped out the territories, actively sabotaged PPV competitors, got around the steroid scandal, made chicken salad out of chicken shit from the results of the World Wildlife Fund settlement, the seeming rash of wrestler deaths around the same time, the bigger scandal that was born from Chris Benoit, and survived not one, but TWO money sinks into the XFL (though, being fair, the second time was a panic fold), they survive all that only to be brought down by some shady backdoor sabotage deal that, to WWE, prob'ly wasn't even anywhere near the worst shady backdoor sabotage deal they've ever done.

It would be about as darkly funny as the time RVD - a guy who made a career of high risk flips and spins and dives and various acrobatics with and without chairs - broke his ankle in a match doing a simple baseball slide. Again, not saying it is or calling for it to happen, but if this turned out to be WWE's "baseball slide", that would totally be a "dude, what the actual fuck?" moment in wrestling history.