Major League Wrestling (MLW) initially filed an antitrust lawsuit against WWE back in early 2022, accusing the company of interfering in its attempted broadcast deals with companies like Tubi and Vice. A judge dismissed the lawsuit last month over a lack of sufficient evidence, but it was updated and refiled on Monday. The amended lawsuit has a number of fresh accusations toward WWE, including its alleged behavior toward other promotions.
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That includes the recent deal between NBCUniversal (which airs Raw and NXT each week and houses the WWE Network library and live pay-per-view feed on Peacock) and Reelz, which recently announced a streaming deal with MLW. It was recently reported by Variety that Peacock would be streaming the Reelz channel live on its service with the exception of MLW Underground due to an NBC agreement with WWE that grants it exclusivity on the streaming service. MLW’s lawsuit claims this is a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act for the U.S. market of pro wrestling.
Other accusations include Paul “Triple H” Levesque’s alleged attempt to stop Ring of Honor and New Japan from running the G1 Supercard event at Madison Square Garden in 2019. The show was initially canceled but still wound up happening after Sinclair Broadcasting allegedly threatened legal action. The lawsuit also mentions WWE allegedly blocking AEW from running the Heritage Bank Center in Cincinnati in 2019 and 2020, the WWE’s signing of then-MLW Champion Swerve Strickland, the attempted signing of Dave Boy Smith Jr. in 2021 and the alleged contract tampering WWE has done with AEW contracted talent.
“I can only speak to the challenges we’ve had and I got a lot of wrestlers come to me and allege that WWE reached out to them to tamper with their contracts and ask them to break their contracts,” AEW President Tony Khan told Dan Le Batard last month. “I can’t confirm that specifically. I can only tell you what the wrestlers have come to me and said. But I’ve had multiple wrestlers and staff report that to me. It was very disturbing, and I’ve had to go out and try to put on good shows despite this alleged tampering, stuff like that. But frankly, I don’t think it’s stopped us because the quality of the product and the quality of the shows is at an all-time high right now.”
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