Major League Wrestling has finally landed its Tubi deal, The Hollywood Reporter revealed in an exclusive Thursday. MLW Fusion now streams free on the platform every Thursday at 8 p.m. ET, with the first episode set for September 17.
For THR’s Tony Maglio, this one was five years in the making. He was set to break news of the same agreement in 2021, and it collapsed the night before his report was supposed to run.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, WWE allegedly pressured Tubi to cancel the original deal by leaning on its relationship with Tubi owner Fox, which aired SmackDown at the time. THR reports the dispute ended with WWE paying MLW $20 million in an out-of-court settlement.
The $20 Million Fallout From The First Tubi Deal
MLW’s antitrust complaint, filed in January 2022, alleged that Stephanie McMahon spoke with a Tubi executive in August 2021 and ultimately pressured Tubi and Fox executives to kill the agreement. The suit never reached trial.
The two sides notified the court of a settlement in December 2023, and TKO’s financial disclosures later confirmed the $20 million WWE paid to end the MLW lawsuit.
MLW confirmed the new Tubi agreement in its own release Thursday morning, with founder and CEO Court Bauer pitching the free model as the way he has built the company from the start.
“Wrestling should be easy to find and free to watch,” Bauer said. “We built MLW around that, no paywalls, no subscription barriers, nothing standing between a fan and the show, and Tubi shares that same fan-first philosophy at scale. Starting Sept. 17, Tubi’s 110 million monthly active users have a front row seat on Thursday nights to the hardest hitting hour in pro wrestling, and it won’t cost a dime.”
How MLW Changed While It Waited
The Hollywood Reporter’s story also details how much MLW has shifted since the first deal fell through. Actor Paul Walter Hauser joined Bauer and Bryan Walsh as an executive producer, and the company signed with Artists First for representation in March 2025.
In fall 2025, MLW teamed with Danny McBride’s Don Gato Tequila and moved its headquarters from New York to Charleston, South Carolina. Fusion relaunched in May 2026, and MLW’s pay-per-view events now stream on Live Nation’s Veeps, which carries Fusion episodes along with NJPW World.
Neither report addressed whether Fusion’s Saturday airings will continue. MLW’s Fusion preview, posted Thursday morning, still listed YouTube at 6:05 p.m. ET and Veeps at 9 p.m. ET for an episode built around Opera Cup first-round matches, including Místico vs. Trevor Lee.
