Major League Wrestling was founded by Court Bauer on June 16, 2002 with their inaugural show in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania holding a tournament to crown the first champion. Jerry Lynn, Steve Corino, La Parka and The Wall competed in the tournament but lost in earlier rounds. The main event saw Shane Douglas defeat Taiyo Kea and Vampiro to become the first MLW World Heavyweight champion.
I got turned onto MLW in 2002 when I got their first DVD “MLW Genesis” in the mail and then started following them in 2003 on Fox Sports Atlantic from the Sunshine Network. Their show “MLW Underground TV” was a very entertaining show with good promo’s, Extreme Championship Wrestling style in-ring action (the ring was blue like ECW’s ring was from 1997 to 2000) and along with their promotion of a Hybrid Fighting style, it all had a very ECW feel and maybe that’s why I became an MLW fan. I missed ECW a lot in 2003 and I had only MLW and TNA on Wednesday Night weekly PPV to fill the void.
MLW was smart to have an ECW feel to the show and I think their biggest show in my opinion happened on September 19, 2003 when they held the “War Games/Super J Cup USA” show in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. In the undercard you had Sonjay Dutt defeating Christopher Daniels in the finals of the Super J Cup tournament to become the first MLW Junior Heavyweight Champion but the main event involved “The Funkin Army” of Terry Funk, Sandman, “Dr. Death” Steve Williams and Sabu with Bill Alfonso defeating the Extreme Horsemen led by Steve Corino and featuring Simon Diamond, C.W. Anderson, P.J. Walker (Justin Credible) and Barry Windham in not just any multi-man elimination match but a WAR GAMES match!
MLW had a hell of a roster which used a lot of TNA and ROH talent but still in 2003 along with already mentioned names they had Paul London, Jerry Lynn, Raven, CM Punk, Homicide, The Samoan Island Tribe (Samu and Mana), Los Maximos, Michael Shane, Norman Smiley, Fuego Guerrero, Bryan Danielson and Teddy Hart.
Great moments in MLW history
This is the first I ever saw of CM Punk in professional wrestling and immediately I became a CM Punk fan:
Terry Funk vs. Steve Corino Barbed Wire Match #1 June 2003
I hope you all enjoyed a look back at Major League Wrestling.
Thanks for reading! Feel free to comment below, and follow me on twitter – @TNAWWEGUY. Give the rest of the Wrestling department a follow also –@AaronWrotkowski and @CrimsonSkorpion. Why not give the site a follow too – @lastwordonsport.
Interested in writing for LastWordOnSports? Find more info at our “Join Our Team” page.
