History Wrestling / MLW

** Contra Unit, headed by Jacob Fatu & Josef Samael, have been this since for ''almost two years now''.

** An unofficial one with Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling has been going on recently, with New Japan’s Rocky Romero wrestling in a few matches for the promotion, while Tom Lawlor regularly wrestles in and has established a Team Filthy branch in New Japan Strong. Lawlor also formed another Team Filthy branch in Paradigm Pro Wrestling.

* '''MLW World Tag Team Champions''': '''Los Parks (El Hijo de LA Park & LA Park)''' since January 13, 2021

* '''Davey Boy Smith Jr. ''' (2019)

* '''MLW National Openweight Champion''': '''Alexander Hammerstone''' since June 1, 2019

** An unofficial one with Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling has been going on recently, with New Japan’s Rocky Romero wrestling in a few matches for the promotion, while Tom Lawlor regularly wrestles in and has established a Team Filthy branch in New Japan.

As usual, you can find the basics at [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_League_Wrestling The Other Wiki]].

** The Filthy Island episode of Fusion was one to the underwhelming reception to the execution of the UFC’s Fight Island concept. It was even promoted as being a wrestling version of what Fight Island should have been.

* WildCard: Technically, Richard Holliday solely by being associated with the now-babyface Alex Hammerstone. While still antagonistic towards Alicia Atout and Savio Vega, Holliday was also part of the squad who raided MLW Headquarters to take it back from CONTRA Unit and is feuding with the firmly heel Gino Medina.

'''Battle Riot (an AlternateCompanyEquivalent and combination of the Wrestling/RoyalRumble and Wrestling/LuchaUnderground’s Aztec Warfare (or Wrestling/DefiantWrestling’s own version of a rumble), with pins, submissions and over the top rope eliminations, usually featuring 40 participants)''':

'''Battle Riot (an AlternateCompanyEquivalent and combination of the Wrestling/RoyalRumble and Wrestling/LuchaUnderground’s Aztec Warfare, with pins, submissions and over the top rope eliminations)''':

* '''Alexander Hammerstone''' (2021)

* '''MLW World Heavyweight Champion''': '''Jacob Fatu''' since July 6, 2019
* '''MLW World Middleweight Champion''': '''Myron Reed''' since May 5, 2021

'''Battle Riot (an AlternateCompanyEquivalent to the Wrestling/RoyalRumble and Wrestling/LuchaUnderground’s Aztec Warfare, with pins, submissions and over the top rope eliminations)''':

'''Battle Riot (an AlternateCompanyEquivalent to the Wrestling/RoyalRumble, with pins and submissions as additional ways to be eliminated)''':

Some of their roster were introduced to a national audience for the first time such as Salina De La Renta, Air Wolf, Barrington Hughes, El Hijo De LA Park, Ricky Martinez, Kotto Brazil, and Marko Stunt just to name a few. Much as [[Wrestling/TNAWrestling Impact Wrestling]] has done in its heyday, MLW has also provided career resurgence to the likes of like Low Ki, Tom Lawlor, Teddy Hart, and arguably, the members of one of the promotion's BigBad stables: Contra Unit.

Some of their roster were introduced to a national audience for the first time such as Salina De La Renta, Air Wolf, Barrington Hughes, El Hijo De LA Park, Ricky Martinez, Kotto Brazil, and Marko Stunt just to name a few. Much as [[Wrestling/TNA Impact Wrestling]] has done in its heyday, MLW has also provided career resurgence to the likes of like Low Ki, Tom Lawlor, Teddy Hart, and arguably, the members of one of the promotion's BigBad stables: Contra Unit.

** "The Restart" is teated

** It looks like Tom's war against Contra, Simon Gotch's new stable is going to end up being this too. The first time they beat Tom down, he promised to finish off the three-headed snake that is the Contra Unit, in his own words.

* ScrewThisImOuttaHere: After failing El Jefe of Azteca Underground numerous times, Salina had enough of the brand and she left the area while boarding a helicopter.

* SpiritualSuccessor: To Wrestling/{{ECW}}, both good and bad. Good, in terms of the action. Bad, in that promoter Court Bauer, along with inheriting several former ECW roster members, seemed to have Wrestling/PaulHeyman's money management skills as well. Since the revival in 2017, it also counts as one to Wrestling/{{WCW}}, in terms of its talent (namely Tony Schiavone, Konnan, Kevin Sullivan, LA PARK to name a few) and the old school style of wrestling. In addition to these promotions, Wrestling/LuchaUnderground as well especially since the Azteca Underground storyline began to take shape. What's more, at the time of the final season of Lucha Underground, a handful of the talent was featured prominently at least in the early years of the revival of MLW.

* TakeThat: The Quagmire Ribs (sponsor of the Hart Foundation's webseries H2) website has a menu option of 'Sinclair's Extreme Right Wings' and its made in Baltimore. Its obviously a jab at ROH and by extension its owners Sinclair Broadcasting.

* WhamEpisode: Episode 131, the season finale of MLW, finally revealed the identity of Wrestling/PromocionesDorado's {{mysterious backer}}, El Jefe. [[spoiler:The man behind Promociones is none other than Dario Cueto from Wrestling/LuchaUnderground.]]

* WildCard: Technically, Richard Holliday solely by being associated with the now babyface Alex Hammerstone. While still antagonistic towards Alicia Atout and Savio Vega, Holliday was also part of the squad who raided MLW Headquarters to take it back from CONTRA Unit and is feuding with the firmly heel Gino Medina.

* YouHaveFailedMe: Salina De La Renta punished Wrestling/SamiCallihan for his failure to take out Tom Lawlor (see BatmanGambit above) by forcing him into a Falls Count Anywhere match against LA Park, which Park won after spearing Callihan through several chairs. Speaking of which, this trope was also the reason that Salina had fired Sammy Guevara for losing his match when he was in her Promociones Dorado faction. Ironically, Salina herself failed El Jefe numerous times during which El Hijo de LA Park lost his match against Bu Ku Dao in a recent Fusion episode and that instance is the straw that break the camels back to which she later got abducted by a large masked man outside the arena. After meeting with El Jefe aka Dario Cueto at his office, it's strongly implied that she got sacrificed as a way to help El Jefe create a new Temple.

Since returning in 2017, MLW was mainly promoting shows in Orlando and, less than a year later, was able to secure a national television deal with beIN Sports for a new weekly series: ''MLW Fusion''. Prior to the show's launch, MLW would introduce contracts that would give them as much control over their roster as a Wrestling/{{WWE}} contract, but still allow their talent to perform in other promotions. During the revival, some of their roster were introduced to a national audience for the first time such as Salina De La Renta, Air Wolf, Barrington Hughes, El Hijo De LA Park, Ricky Martinez, Kotto Brazil, and Marko Stunt just to name a few. Not only that, MLW has indirectly provide some sort of career resurgence to some of their wrestlers like Low Ki, Tom Lawlor, Teddy Hart, and arguably Simon Gotch who would go on to become one of the promotion's BigBad along with his Contra Unit stable.

* AcronymAndAbbreviationOverload: CONTRA Unit’s full name is apparently “Crusaders of Nihilistic Terror Revolution Armada” Unit.

* BigBad: Steve Corino, as the leader of the Extreme Horsemen in the original. Low Ki, Salina De La Renta and their Wrestling/PromocionesDorado faction and later Contra headed by Simon Gotch with Jacob Fatu & Josef Samael in the revival.

* BigGood: [[Wrestling/VonErichFamily Ross and Marshall Von Erich]] are treated as this during the ongoing feud with Contra. While their alliance with Tom Lawlor is treated as MLW's ultimate team of good guys, Contra were considered unstoppable.until the Von Erichs arrived. Only after they showed up have Contra actually started losing matches. They also represent tradition and respect in wrestling, i.e. Contra's polar opposite.

* CanonWelding: [[spoiler: Since the arrival of Mil Muertes and "El Jefe" Dario Cueto, essentially it retroactively places the Lucha Underground universe into the MLW realm especially with Muertes' LU backstory along with Cueto pulling the strings of Azteca Underground and the desire of creating a new Temple. In that respect, those activities also qualify as a StealthSequel to the late Lucha Underground promotion.]]

** The Stud Stable came back when MLW began running shows again with Colonel Parker, Aria Blake, the Dirty Blondes and Mike Parrow (he wasn’t actually part of them this time around since he was fired by them in 2018) all returning for the reboot. When MLW had a small hiatus before Battle Riot 3, every member of the stable was gone once again with no fanfare. Given they were barely used at all after the reboot, what purpose their return served is unknown (then again they were almost always used as glorified {{Jobber}}s before, so nothing out of the ordinary).
* ContinuityNod: While Fred Yehi got Chuck Cunninghamed again and MLW's apparently planned reboot of Team Filthy after Simon Gotch betrayed Tom Lawlor never came to fruition, Ariel Dominguez was shown beaten up and bloodied after trying to save Tom from Contra beating #1000 on Episode 61 of MLW Fusion.

* {{Crossover}}: Unofficially with Wrestling/ImpactWrestling in the revival during which at least a handful of the MLW roster is comprised with its wrestlers also being affiliated with Impact (& vice versa in Impact's case). In Impact's United We Stand event during WrestleMania week, this trope would come into play officially with at least one Impact vs MLW match on the card.

* DarkerAndEdgier: Moreso than WWE, less so with Lucha Underground, sits about equal with Impact Wrestling.

** Low Ki, in spite of his short stature. MLW have pushed him as being untouchable since 2004, with him having never lost once within the company. [[spoiler: His 15-year undefeated streak ended at the hands of 'Filthy' Tom Lawlor during MLW [=SuperFight=] in which he defeated Low Ki in his world title defense via referee stoppage.]]

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: Some of the early episodes of Fusion don't seem to have people's alignments quite worked out so it's weird going back and seeing a heel Team Filthy or a heel Pentagon feuding with his brother Fenix while being managed by Salina De La Renta before the two won the MLW Tag Team titles (then again, it could be a CallBack to their days in Wrestling/LuchaUnderground where their relationship was not acknowledged at all, not that it has never stopped them from wrestling each other anyway).
* EnemyMine: What does noted Garbage Wrestlers Sami Callihan and Mance Warner have in common? Both of them have beef with Salina De La Renta (& her Wrestling/PromocionesDorado stable). Why you ask? Callihan has his grievances with Salina after failing to take out Tom Lawlor as well as Warner spilling light beer onto Salina's dress.

* HateSink: Contra Unit has quickly established themselves as this. Their attack on Tom Lawlor after his cage match with Low Ki and their beatdown of Ace Romero after his match with Simon Gotch got thrown out drew massive heat. It went UpToEleven after Jacob Fatu and Josef Samael's beatdown of a jobber tag team got so heated that fans began throwing garbage into the ring and forced arena security in Chicago to act in order to stop irate fans from rushing the ring. A similar incident occurred in another episode of Fusion when Tom Lawlor (along w/ his Team Filthy teammates) desecrated the Texas state flag in the middle of the ring and disrespected the hometown heroes; Ross and Marshall Von Erich. Yep, Team Filthy isn't Dallas' favorite wrestlers at this point.

* IntercontinuityCrossover: The arrival of Mil Muertes and the acquisition of Wrestling/PromocionesDorado by Azteca Underground is (possibly) one between MLW and the defunct Wrestling/LuchaUnderground.

* OddlySmallOrganization: Black Friday Management, a supposedly shadow syndicate founded by Gary Hart along with Homicide and Low Ki during MLW’s last year in its original run. It came back when Low Ki came back for the revival along with Stokely Hathaway as the manager, though it was implied that it also did business outside the promotion as [[Wrestling/MontelVontaviousPorter MVP]] was said to be a former member before he came to the company. Currently only Low Ki is still affiliated with it.

* PsychoForHire: Unlike in Impact where he's more of a DarkMessiah, Sami Callihan is a bounty hunter in MLW, often paid to do dirty work for Promociones Dorado to soften people up. Later on after Callihan's departure, Jimmy Havoc fulfills the role for the faction.

* TheQuisling: Simon Gotch betrayed his best friend Tom Lawlor to Promociones Dorado, leading him straight into an ambush.
* ResetButton: The ''Reload'' shows in January 2004 were supposed to be this, but it was too little too late. Happened again 13 years later after the promotion initially folded.

** The Stud Stable came back when MLW began running shows again with Colonel Parker, Aria Blake, the Dirty Blondes and Mike Parrow (he wasn’t actually part of them this time around since his firing in 2018) all returning for the reboot. When MLW had a small hiatus before Battle Riot 3, every member of the stable was gone once again with no fanfare. Given they were barely used at all after the reboot, what purpose their return served is unknown.

'''Opera Cup''':

'''Battle Riot''':

* DisneyOwnsThisTrope: The company trademarked the [=WarGames=] name due to no active rights holder, as Wrestling/{{WWE}} left the name dormant after its purchase of Wrestling/{{WCW}} and MLW used it for its 2003 and 2018 shows with the name. However, in 2018, WWE acquired the rights to the [=WarGames=] name from MLW for its [[Wrestling/{{WWENXT}} NXT]] [=TakeOver=] events, which led to MLW to create [[SuspiciouslySimilarSubstitute a variation called War Chamber]].

** On February 2, 2020, MLW announced that they have entered into a partnership with Wrestling/DragonGate. Details and potential matches are to be announced.

* ButtMonkey: Stokely Hathaway.