Sam Adonis Explains Decision To Sign With MLW

For a long time, Sam Adonis was a man without a country, working promotions in the US, UK, Japan, and most notably Mexico, where he's had notable runs in both AAA and CMLL. Now, Adonis has finally decided to settle down a bit, signing a contract with US promotion MLW, who he'll debut for at the promotion's Fightland tapings in Philadelphia this Sunday.. In an interview with Wrestling Inc.'s Senior News Editor Nick Hausman, Adonis discussed some of the reasons he hadn't signed a contract until now.

"It's really kind of cool and funny in a way," Adonis said. "I've been very anti-contract probably as long as I've known you. I think in professional wrestling contracts are most of the time a bit of a farce or a facade, unless it's real life changing money. There's very little incentive for any wrestler to sign a contract. We've kind of reached a point where young wrestlers are conditioned that signing is a milestone that you've got to sign and you want to basically put out there online and say, this person has signed with this company."

"And due to my personal experience, background in the wrestling industry, I have really had no interest in signing anything other than the right contract. I had a contract with WWE when I was 21 years old, and that kind opened my eyes to the real world of professional wrestling. And since then I've been very, very busy." So why did Adonis choose to sign a contract now, and why did he choose MLW? As he puts it, MLW presented him with a scenario that was too good to resist.

"I've been very fortunate to be one of the busiest, unsigned talents on the planet," Adonis said. "I've had a lot of obligations to Mexico and it's basically just been my path and my journey to keep those commitments in Mexico. For the first time, MLW came to me and actually presented me with an opportunity that I pretty much couldn't refuse it. It's kinda cool in my opinion. I look at MLW a little bit of the way that ECW was structured twenty-five years ago. It's almost like an Ellis island, if you will."

Adonis also likes the fact that MLW is a higher quality program in terms of production values, and will also allow wrestlers such as himself to work elsewhere, like AAA. "MLW is a higher production, a higher value production, a higher quality program, but they also are taking advantage of finding the best young talent out there," Adonis said. "So there's not too many places where you can find a guy that his main priority is New Japan, like TJP and throw him in the pot of MLW. Somebody like Lince Dorado who's straight out of WWE, throw him in the pot."

"You get Taya Valkyrie, who's still in Mexico with me, a lot of the AAA luchadors. It really seems to be one of the only melting pots of professional wrestling where you can be committed to the brand but still be able to fulfill other commitments. And that's what was important to me. And at this current time, that's something I'm very excited and happy to look forward to."