Court Bauer opens up about when he knew MLW was going to definitely go on hiatus because of COVID-19 and the slow climb toward feeling comfortable enough to begin the restart.
A show in Mexico on March 13 was the last time Major League Wrestling ran an event before being shut down by the global coronavirus pandemic. Slowly but surely, Court Bauer has been making moves to work restarting the brand, and part of that has been through acquiring major streaming deals like the one reached with DAZN.
Speaking in an interview with DAZN, Bauer detailed what it was like when he realized the brand would have to go on hiatus and how he put wrestler safety First when beginning to think about a restart.
“First off, I’m thrilled that we are going to be back, holding tapings and providing exclusive content to DAZN. People kept asking when we were going to return,” Court began. “Our last show was in Mexico on March 13. Things happen so fast. I think that morning of our show, the NBA decided to temporarily go on hiatus. By that night and the final main event, we knew we were going to be going on hiatus. You don't know for how long. There's no way to really chart a course like this. But we knew we would probably be shutting it down for some period of time until we got a sense of where everything was in the world.
“We really wanted to operate with an abundance of caution for the health and wellness of our athletes, our crew, and our staff. So we didn't rev it right back up. We wanted to be careful and wanted to take into account the latest developments for treatment, PPE, vaccines, and anything and everything that would give us a better sense of comfort for our fans, athletes, and everyone involved.”
He continued, “As time has progressed and checking in with our chief medical advisor, Dr. Schwegler, we started to see some encouraging steps on the treatment as well as the testing and a lot of breakthroughs in the last — including a total breakthrough this week with an instant five-minute test that the FDA approved. The saliva direct test is really a big move. You're seeing treatment really get better. We have all these vaccines in the mix. We’ve talked with different organizations, our media team, our medical team, going down to Johns Hopkins Hospital to be part of a symposium on the virus and try to get as much information to see how other people have done it with the success they've had and things they would suggest, or doing differently.
“Taking all that into account has been very helpful for us. That's put us on a track to say, ‘Okay, I think we can start to enter the next phase of this.’ Part of that for us was getting our staff certified training and preparation for that. In terms of the virus, while there's a whole process you go through to get certified training, a lot of it really is common sense stuff, but you want everyone equipped with the knowledge. Then, of course, bringing in someone in that and oversee this in the trenches. It's important to have that person really monitoring everything, and having everything set up and helping us prepare our crew or talent in advance of that with all the information, the guidelines, everything, and then starting the testing process.”
As part of their restart, MLW has announced a move to Wednesday nights on the Fubo Sports Network. Learn more about that at this link.
