Top MLW Stars Were Turned Down During WWE Tryouts
The owner of MLW revealed in a recent interview that two of MLW’s top stars were turned down during WWE tryouts and now they are thriving in MLW.
Major League Wrestling is a wrestling promotion that is run by CEO Court Bauer, who is also a former WWE writer. While MLW isn’t necessarily a direct competitor to major wrestling companies like WWE and AEW in terms of fan support, they do have a talented roster of wrestlers that do their best to put on entertaining shows for the fans that attend MLW events.
Two of MLW’s cornerstone talents are Alex Hammerstone, who has been the MLW World Heavyweight Champion for over 570 days. The man that Hammerstone beat was Jacob Fatu, who had an 819-day reign as the Major League World Champion that started in July 2019.
Jacob Fatu is the son of who competed in WWE as Tama and The Tonga Kid. Jacob was trained by his uncle, Rikishi, which means WWE superstars The Usos & Solo Sikoa (the sons of Rikishi) are his cousins.
A lot of wrestling fans might wonder why guys like Hammerston and Fatu stay in MLW for as long as they do instead of going to bigger companies like WWE, AEW or others.
During a recent episode of Busted Open Radio, Court Bauer revealed that WWE didn’t want to sign Hammerstone or Fatu when they went for tryouts.
“Hammerstone went for a few tryouts and was told, ‘You look too much like Triple H.”
“The same with Fatu — people forget he had like three or four tryouts at WWE PC. They didn’t sign him. Now, everyone’s like, ‘He should go to WWE.’ There’s a reason the dude keeps re-upping with us. This is the system that has figured it out. We found him, and he found himself.”
Bauer would go on to talk about how Jacob loves his family that works for WWE, but he likes it in Major League Wrestling.
“He has all the love for his family [The Bloodline] and what they’re doing there [in WWE], but he’s enjoying his time in MLW. If you’re finding him on MLW, support the company that gave him that spotlight. Don’t try to fancy book something, when the machine there [in WWE] didn’t get it, didn’t see it. So, support where he is and where he is thriving.”
Court Bauer would go on to praise Fatu and Hammerstone even more by saying the company built around them.
“Hammerstone and Fatu have been the bedrock of MLW,” Bauer stressed. “We have built the last 4 or 5 years of MLW on the back of them.”
Whether Jacob Fatu ends up in WWE some day is unknown, but he did claim recently that he did want to go to WWE. However, it was in “God’s hands” which could mean he might be interested in working for WWE someday. Then again, he could be comfortable exactly where he is too.