On the final day they could amend their lawsuit against WWE following a judge's ruling, MLW did just that on Monday which included additional information that highlighted their recent issues with Reelz.
The amended lawsuit was filed in US District Court in the Northern District of California, based in San Jose. On February 13th, the court granted WWE's motion to dismiss the antitrust portion of the lawsuit and gave MLW 21 days to refile.
Calling it "predatory conduct," MLW is continuing to claim that WWE is impeding their ability "to compete in the licensing of its programming for distribution on streaming services and continues to threaten to deprive MLW of its ability to license its programming for distribution on cable."
Through WWE's actions, MLW says they are "at risk of its business being irreparably destroyed."
MLW is claiming they are at risk of losing their deal with Reelz because of an exclusivity clause WWE has with NBCUniversal's Peacock. Shortly after MLW debuted on Reelz in February, the latter announced a streaming deal with Peacock but because of the clause, any MLW programming has to be blacked out when airing on Peacock.
Along with the Peacock/Reelz news, it was reported shortly after by Variety that MLW's deal with Reelz was ending in April. Reelz released a statement saying no decision had been made by either side.
As part of trying to meet the court's demand for more evidence, the updated filing claims WWE has 92% of the total market with AEW controlling 6% of the market, leaving 2% for everyone else.
Additionally, the updated filing also included WWE's effort to block Ring of Honor from running Madison Square Garden in New York City during WrestleMania weekend in 2018 as further proof of the aforementioned predatory practices.
From the filing:
"In a naked attempt to restrain competition through the abuse of its market power, WWE, through Paul Levesque, its then-Executive Vice President, called MSG to insist that MSG cancel the show with ROH and NJPW. Unable to resist the pressure from the industry behemoth, MSG succumbed, and withdrew from the ROH agreement and cancelled the ROH show. While Sinclair threatened to sue MSG over their agreement, and the show was rescheduled, ROH and NJPW were forced to incur significant legal expense to vindicate their legal rights and to defend against WWE’s anti-competitive behavior. A smaller nascent competitor, without the support of Sinclair, may not have been able to resist such pressure and incur the necessary legal expenses to vindicate its rights."
It's unknown when the court will make their next ruling. The original lawsuit was filed in January 2022.
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