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It was late one night, channel surfing I happened across a program description: Major League Wrestling; 60 minutes, Sports. A fairly vague description to be sure, but I thought "what the hey, I'll check it out". Now anyone who has ever turned to check out late night unknown federation wrestling realizes that you are entering into a complete gamble. For every ECW, IPW Hardcore, or NWA affiliate that turns out pretty good shows, you also have the half naked women's leagues and single camera angle indies in front a raucous crowd of 18 including the announcers and referees. But I took the gamble and it paid out huge.

What I found was Court Bauer's Major League Wrestling. An not only did I find an amazing show with fairly decent production values, but here on my television was Satoshi Kojima, frickin' Koji! How did I miss this? How did I not know about this show? Needless to say I logged onto their website on found that they were having a show on May 9th, 2003 at this club in Orlando. 

Being a Tampa resident, I didn't venture over to O-Town unless it was work related, I am not a big fan of theme parks or the terrible I-4 traffic, but I saw the following matches advertised: Terry Funk vs. Steve Corino; La Parka vs. Sabu; Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka; Raven vs. C.M. Punk (who at the time was a member of Raven's NWA Gathering) and a group of other names I recognized. I was sold on the La Parka, L.A. Park or whatever you want to call him, Sabu match alone. He was going to be there!! So with my brothers, cousins, and unimpressed wife in tow we loaded up in the economy sized car I drove at the time (does anyone know what a Daewoo is? haha) and headed over to Orlando.

I was blasted for over 3 hours of nonstop action, fun, beers, and just all around coolness. When we first arrived, we hit the bar and I met Dr. Death Steve Williams right off the bat. I've been to a lot of smaller wrestling shows, but this was Dr. Death! Just hanging out. After seeing future superstars Christopher Daniels, Homicide, Paul London, Michael Shane, Jamal (Umaga) and a host of other amazing talent we were treated to an amazing match between La Parka and Sabu.

If you watch the DVD you can see this group of kids holding up a La Parka mask towards the back, that was us with our www.Highspots.com purchased mask. La Parka was wearing these chains around his boots and when he was flipped out into the crowd something caught my younger brothers hand and cut it open. My brother still to this day proudly displays the scar, a scar given to him (albeit accidentally) by the one and only La Parka, how's that for a souvenir? I was jealous to say the least.

In something that was blowing our minds Raven fought C.M. Punk, because at the time in TNA they were allies. So this was something that we were hoping for to happen in TNA, but here MLW was presenting a dream match to us.

Although the La Parka stuff was amazing, we also saw the real Living Legend Terry Funk battle Steve Corino in a bloodbath. To non hardcore wrestling fans this might seem morbid or bizarre, but we were able to grab a rag soaked with the blood of the Funker. This strange souvenir is still in the proud possession of my cousin, and as strange as this was, since then I have found a few fans that have similar souvenirs.

The highlight of highlights that night for me was to see Mike Awesome against Masato Tanaka. I watched in complete wonder as these modern day gladiators tore themselves apart and the house down. What's more is that at the end of the night Mike Awesome still took pictures with each and everyone of us and signed autographs. People can say what they want about the late Mike Awesome, but he was genuinely a great guy to us and even went so far as to thank us for coming to the show.

We went to other MLW shows and got to see a lot of great wrestlers, I watched their TV show religiously and also bought the DVDs. MLW seemed like it would succeed. It was a well produced show, stock full of up and coming talent and established stars. At the time I thought it was miles ahead of TNA in terms of quality and giving the fans what they wanted. Then suddenly, it was over. Like some meteor burning bright and then disintegrating almost as soon as it was spotted.

Most of the talent would go on to work for TNA even if it was just a few shows here and there. The Japanese talent went back to Japan not to be seen regularly on U.S. soil, several of the wrestlers went to WWE and became successful, L.A. Park and Vampiro still wrestle in Mexico, and even the owner Court Bauer went to work for WWE. 

I can see why WWE wanted Court Bauer. He had a great mind for creating a show that was modern and displayed the talent in a way that people wanted to see them. I truly think that timing was what killed MLW. If it were to come out today, I think it would have been successful. MLW was unique and fun. It provided me and my family with hours of just great entertainment and did something that most other shows I have been to did not do, MLW created a truly memorable experience. MLW allowed us to interact with the wrestlers, have fun, not feel ripped off and go home happy.

So if no one has ever said this: "Thank you Court Bauer, Thank you to the wrestlers, manager, referees, producers, writers, agents, and fans of MLW. While many promotions come and go with little fan fair. Know that this wrestling fans remembers and remembers fondly"