Court Bauer On MLW's ONE SHOT Event, Building His Roster, Booking The Show, How The Idea Came About
Today The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling welcomes the man behind MLW RADIO & MLW: Major League Wrestling as Court Bauer joins us for EPISODE #299. Discussing the HUGE MLW: One-Shot return of the Major League Wrestling promotion on October 5th, Court gives John and Chad the low down on the insanely good card thus far for the super-show, the impact of Tony Schiavone's return to wrestling broadcasting and all the happenings surrounding one of the most anticipated live wrestling shows of 2017. We also get a glimpse of what is going on in the world of MLW Radio and the growing MLW roster of mega-stars who continue to bring amazing audio content to fans worldwide. The full episode can be downloaded at this link.
MLW's return to wrestling events as One Shot takes place on October 5th:
"It's right around the corner but it's been a really fun experience as a project that we thought we could all get together one time and collaborate and do something fun and different and it is something that the fans can enjoy, that is number one in our goals here. This was something that just came about while we were all sitting around at 2:30 in the morning at a nightclub in Orlando for WaleMania and I'm sitting there with Wale and a few other people (Mister Saint Laurent, Alex Greenfield) and we are all sitting there thinking it has been a lot of fun doing WaleMania which is like a podcast and an after party and Wale performs and it goes until like 3:30 in the morning. Every WrestleMania week it is kind of like the kickoff of WrestleMania weekend and long story short we said this is fun but it would be cool to like maybe finally do that thing we have talked about doing and do a ONE SHOT MLW wrestling event and that is kind of the term we used in calling it a one off / One Shot."
Collaborating with Wale on this project:
"For at least two or three years Wale and I have been talking about doing something like this but he's put out albums with Jerry Seinfeld and been really busy doing a lot of cool projects and just did something with Judd Apatow that is going to drop in ( I think) January. So between that and having kids and stuff we couldn't get our schedules synced up and low and behold we both had a gap this fall to make it happen when we said if we are going to do it than we've got to do it now or who knows when we are going to do it. We were just really fortunate enough to surround ourselves with great talent like Ricochet, Shane Strickland, MVP, Sami Callihan and Jeff Cobb (former Olympian) and UFC fighter Tom Lawlor and a lot of other guys we have yet to announce so it makes my job easy because they are just rock stars."
Putting together the roster and crew for One Shot:
"There are definitely guys that I wanted to either work with again or with and collaborate with. Case and point, Sami Callihan. He is just so creative and he is everywhere now and is one of the hardest working men as a free agent in wrestling. I had an opportunity to work with Shane Strickland briefly when I was consulting with Lucha Underground and AAA but I was really not hands on and it was more from a far and the same goes for Ricochet too, that is where I first met him. They are just super-talented guys and they are guys who were on my list and guys I wanted to work with.
"I am really privileged to have guys like MSL and Alex and plus being able to bring Tony Schiavone and Rich Bocchini into the mix as our announce team was fantastic. With Tony it is the first time in sixteen years that he will be calling the action and he will be live in Orlando, he is not going to be live in a studio or somewhere else he will be live there and it is such a great honor to have Tony who has turned down so many requests to come back over the years finally comes back. He is part of the MLW Radio Network so he kind of had too (laughing) and Rich too because Rich is a great get and did so much great work with NXT and to me is the definitive voice of NXT still even having left there over a year ago."
Returning to the booker chair and working on creative:
"I've been a part of creative teams and I just never felt very satisfied with my own experience there but I also didn't feel like I really accomplished what Vince McMahon wanted us to because I didn't think that kind of dynamic worked. Approaching this project as an experiment was that I am going to go old school like I was taught by my mentor Gary Hart and learning under Terry Funk during MLW and that is to have a booker and an assistant booker and that is all you really need. From my personal experience that really is all you need because I've seen the committee thing and it really just never works so I think we have a more distinct path in where we are going with everything and I feel unlike where you see things take random turns, you will have a definitive beginning, middle and end to what we are going to do with these stories."
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