MLW has landed the Tubi deal it once accused WWE of blocking. The promotion announced a new streaming distribution agreement with Tubi for its weekly flagship series, MLW FUSION. New episodes stream Thursdays at 8 PM ET, free, beginning September 17.
“Wrestling should be easy to find and free to watch,” MLW Founder and CEO Court Bauer said in the announcement. “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.”
Bauer pointed to the reach the platform gives the promotion.
“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,” Bauer said.
The deal closes a loop that opened in 2020. MLW had a Tubi agreement in place at that point which fell apart before it could be announced. MLW later sued WWE in the Northern District of California, alleging in the January 2022 antitrust complaint that WWE had pressured Fox Corporation, which owns Tubi, into killing the deal. WWE’s SmackDown aired on Fox at the time, and MLW’s filings alleged that Stephanie McMahon was involved in the interference. The suit also alleged WWE interfered with an MLW relationship with VICE TV, attempted to poach MLW talent, and used its own media contracts to keep rival promotions off certain platforms.
The two sides notified the court of a settlement on December 22, 2023, and the case was dismissed with prejudice four days later. The figure was not disclosed at the time but surfaced in TKO Group Holdings’ 2023 results and an accompanying SEC filing, which put the settlement at $20 million. WWE did not admit wrongdoing, and the allegations were never tested at trial.
MLW teased this week’s announcement with a promo video titled “Transmission incoming,” carrying subtitles that read in part, “Some things can’t be stopped. Once denied. Now, destiny demands its due.” The video’s description read, “They closed the door. We kept fighting.”
The Tubi agreement also moves the show. FUSION relaunched on May 30, 2026 with a two-hour premiere and had been airing Saturdays at 6:05 PM ET on YouTube, a slot Bauer said at the time was chosen deliberately as a nod to the hour Georgia Championship Wrestling occupied on Ted Turner’s superstation. Thursdays at 8 PM ET puts the show head to head with a different part of the week entirely. Episodes will remain available on Veeps and NJPW World, the latter added in June under MLW’s ongoing working relationship with New Japan.
MLW says it will continue producing live special events alongside the weekly series. Its pay-per-view events are distributed through Live Nation’s Veeps. The promotion, which relocated its headquarters from New York to Charleston, South Carolina, is executive produced by Bauer, actor Paul Walter Hauser and Bryan Walsh.
FUSION has been free to watch throughout its relaunch, on YouTube and then on NJPW World, so the pitch Bauer is making about no paywalls is not new. What is new is placement on a service with a user base in the tens of millions and an algorithmic front page, which is a different proposition from a subscriber base that has to go looking. Tubi has also been building out live and sports-adjacent programming, and a weekly wrestling hour fits that pattern.
MLW has moved FUSION’s home repeatedly over the past four years, through beIN Sports, Pro Wrestling TV, YouTube and now Tubi, and consistency of placement has been the harder problem for the promotion than availability.
