Various: FITE Co-Founder on GCW Joining Service, Von Erichs MLW Update, Sat. NJPW Strong Card, Indies

Nov 4, 2022

FITE TV Co-Founder Comments on GCW Recently Joining Their Service

A recent episode of Fightful’s Punch Out podcast had FITE TV co-founder Michael Weber as the guest. One of the topics discussed included Weber’s thoughts on Game Changer Wrestling recently signing a deal to join their FITE+ streaming service.

“Like a lot of things that we’ve learned, this is sort of born out of the pandemic. We had primarily been only pay-per-view, which worked well for us, a good business model, but during the pandemic we had no live events. We had been tinkering with the idea of doing a subscription service. We all know pay-per-view does very well for live and a few days after, but after 30 days, you hardly ever get a buy. With FITE+, the intent is making the older program available at a subscription rate. It has had good success. In the last couple of months, we started adding live programming to FITE+ to amp it up and give it more value. We took it to the next level with GCW, Wrestling Revolver and Black Label Pro. There is plenty of other programming we’re adding. Some more in December, January, some special events in January. We’re going to continue adding programming.
GCW is committed to giving us 75 events per year. They’ll probably give us 85. They do a lot of shows. We were impressed with GCW and their fan loyalty, they always got reasonable and good numbers. Not WWE numbers or AEW numbers, but good and consistent numbers. Initially, we thought it was the same couple 1,000 people buying their shows every week. We found out that wasn’t true. A lot of people were only buying four or five events a year out of 75 because you’d go broke if you bought every show they did. It was relatively priced at $13.99. We did more digging of actual buyers and found this much bigger universe of people who were willing to buy GCW but couldn’t or didn’t want to buy every show. Now, at a low rate, they can watch all the shows.”

Transcript h/t: Fightful.com

Von Erichs’ MLW Contracts Set to Expire in June of 2023

A recent episode of the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast had The Von Erich’s Marshall and Ross Von Erich as the guests. One of the topics discussed included Marshall Von Erich revealing that their contracts with Major League Wrestling are currently set to expire in June of 2023.

“We’ve been taking the last month to get back into shape and take — we’re gonna pour our next five to seven years, maybe even longer but, we feel like it’s time. I know a lot of people don’t know but I guess our time with MLW is almost up, I think June 1st is when our contracts are up so we’re just gonna see what happens after that, play the field, you know? Never say never but we’re just gonna, yeah, see what comes to us after this.”

The Von Erich’s also gave their thoughts on the future of their careers.

Marshall Von Erich – “We’re gonna see how the cards unfold. Now, we’re definitely open to anything. Open to staying with MLW, open to AEW, WWE, any promotion that will offer us — maybe go back to Japan. We’re open to anything. I’m not gonna say ‘absolutely not’ to anything but, you know, right now, we’re getting some dates nailed down. I can’t confirm anything yet because I’m still talking to promoters and working out flights and stuff but, we wanna do a comeback. Come back to the States and wanna try to land everywhere or do some shows everywhere just to get our name out there, get our name back out there and let people know we’re still doing our thing.”
Ross Von Erich – “Maybe show some love back to everybody that showed us love because, you know, if we do hypothetically sign some contract and we’re not able to do these things, we’re always gonna have such good memories of the indie scene so we just wanna really get that out of our system I guess.”

Transcript h/t: PostWrestling.com

Full Card for Saturday’s Episode of NJPW Strong

New Japan Pro Wrestling recently announced the full card for this Saturday’s New Japan Showdown 2022 Night 1 themed episode of NJPW Strong, which will air on New Japan World starting at 8:00PM EST.

#1 Contender’s for NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Championship Four-way match – Stray Dog Army (Misterioso & Barrett Brown) vs. TMDK (Shane Haste & Bad Dude Tito) vs. LA Dojo (Kevin Knight & The DKC) vs. West Coast Wrecking Crew (Jorel Nelson & Royce Isaacs)
Rocky Romero vs. Christopher Daniels
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Gabriel Kidd

Misc. Wrestling News & Notes

Black Label Pro Wrestling and Wrestling Revolver announced that they have recently signed deals with FITE TV for their FITE+ streaming service. Both companies also announced that they will be making their official debuts on the service on November 12th with Slamilton event from BLP and Smoke ‘Em If Ya Got ‘Em event from Wrestling Revolver.

West Coast Pro Wrestling and Prestige Wrestling announced that they will be staying on IndependentWrestling.TV’s (IWTV) streaming service for the foreseeable future.

New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Katsuyori Shibata recently launched his official account on Twitter.

CW Entertainment, parent company of CW Network, recently announced that they have hired former POP TV President Brad Schwartz to be their new President of the company, according to Deadline.com. PWInsider’s Mike Johnson reported that Schwartz had been a big supporter of Impact Wrestling during the promotion’s tenure on POP TV from 2016 to 2019.

Stardom announced that Mayu Iwatani recently relinquished her SWA World Championship in order to fully focus on her upcoming match for the IWGP Women’s Championship and potential title reign should she win.

Major League Wrestling recently announced that next year’s Blood & Thunder event will be taking place on January 7, 2023 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was also announced that tickets for this upcoming event will officially go on sale starting on November 8th.

MLW reportedly will be holding next year’s SuperFight event on February 4, 2023 at the 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, according to PWInsider.

MLW recently announced a new match for the card of their November 10th episode of MLW Fusion. This episode was originally taped this past June and prior to both Scarlett Bordeaux and Karrion Kross signing deals and making their official returns to WWE this past August.