WWE Files Motion Against Amended MLW Lawsuit, Argues For Suit To Be Dismissed

The WWE-MLW saga continues and this time WWE has filed a response to MLW’s amended lawsuit, arguing for the civil suit to be dismissed.

According to a report from Pwinsider, WWE filed the response today ahead of a hearing scheduled for June 15.

As you may already know, MLW filed an amended version of their lawsuit against WWE this past March, accusing them of violating the Sherman Act regarding anti-trust practices and more.

WWE’s new response states that MLW contradicted itself as Court Bauer’s company had admitted to selling its media rights to REELZ and that other promotions such as AEW and WOW – Women Of Wrestling “have expanded output and sold their media rights for millions of dollars.”

WWE argued, “These admissions are fatal to MLW’s monopolization claim. Hoping to diminish them, MLW told the Court that Reelz would prematurely cancel its contract with MLW because of WWE and it labeled AEW and WOW “de minimis” competitors. In actuality, Reelz extended its ten-week trial run with MLW, and MLW just announced multiple new, “hugely important” media rights agreements with a streaming service, FITE. As for AEW, far from being a de minimis competitor, it just expanded the sale of its media rights to WarnerBros.-Discovery (“WBD”) for a reported $240 million per year.”

The response goes on to say that MLW did not allege any claims against WWE when it came to their definition of their product market, and that “MLW could never allege facts to establish revenues as an appropriate measure of market share. Market share reflects the pieces of the pie for which competitors are competing. WWE’s alleged competitors are not competing for a fixed pool of revenues.”

In addition, WWE stated that MLW hasn’t credibly claimed any harm to competition or antitrust standing and that the claim that WWE locks down IPs of wrestlers is completely inaccurate as the company “contracts with former WWE talent who retain rights to their intellectual property created prior to joining WWE.”

WWE further argued, “MLW attempted to minimize this success through a reference to unsubstantiated online rumors (rather than its own interactions with Reelz) that WWE’s exclusive contract with NBCU’s Peacock would cause Reelz to cancel MLW programming prematurely. Yet Reelz did not cancel MLW. Instead, it continued to purchase and air MLW content beyond an initial ten-week trial period. Separately, MLW plead that WWE somehow blocked it from selling its media rights to FITE, a streaming platform, despite the fact that WWE has no alleged contractual relationship with FITE. In actuality, MLW just announced a new, “hugely important” agreement with FITE, and MLW’s weekly program, Fusion, is now available on FITE+, beIN Sports, and YouTube, and MLW entered into yet another agreement with FITE to air its premium live events, similar to how Peacock airs WWE’s premium live events.”

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