FITE COO Michael Weber Discusses FITE's Impact On Current Pro Wrestling Boom

In terms of wrestling and combat sports content, there are few streaming services better than FITE TV. They have partnerships with AEW, Impact Wrestling and many other promotions with millions of subscribers worldwide.

We recently caught up with FITE's COO Michael Weber. During the interview, we asked Weber about MJF's meteoric rise in a short amount of time. Weber talked about what makes him so unique and captivating to fans.

"I've never seen anybody get such a reaction at such an early age. Again, I've had the experience and opportunity to work with so many different people and most of the time guys are in their late 20s/early 30s before they hit their stride. I think he just turned 23. He's a great guy and knows how to get reactions out of the fans and he is a fairly good athlete which always helps," stated Weber.

We are at the dawn of a new wrestling boom and one that we haven't seen in decades. Weber was asked how FITE will factor in on this era of pro wrestling.

"I was at WCW when we had Nitro going up against Raw and I was there all 83 weeks [laughs]. That was a pretty cool time because between the two of our companies, we actually grew the whole category ? more wrestling fans. There was independent wrestling then but nothing like it is now," said Weber.

"With FITE, GCW is a great example. They have an event this weekend and they are a great company. They've been on our platform for about 13-14 months now. Not to be offensive to them, but they would have never gotten a network deal. USA or TBS would have never given them a network deal. But we gave them a platform where they can grow and they've got a fantastic fan base."

He then joked that he wants to invest in florescent light tubes considering how often they are used in GCW. Weber then talked about GCW for running in Japan and New Japan for exploring other markets.

"Companies like New Japan always had a great reputation for fantastic wrestling and we're airing a show they're doing from London. They're branching out and we're branching with them and that's gonna be exclusively on FITE this weekend," said Weber.

"Then in two weeks we're doing Triple A from New York so they're branching out. So we're getting older, established wrestling companies that never really had that much exposure in the US until recently. We're able to give them a platform as while they may get a network deal someday, they certainly aren't going to do it right now."

With Weber being in the position he's in, he has to manage lots of personalities and lots of egos. He talked about how FITE is able to cultivate such good relationships and what keeps their company so popular amongst clients.

"I have to have good relationships with people. I've made it an effort in my career not to burn bridges," stated Weber. "But the real key to it is, our company is a technology company first and technology wins. I could be the greatest salesman in the world and have all these relationships but if our platform sucked or crashed, it would never work."

Weber then noted how the technology has gotten better and better and that has helped fans find new promotions.

You can learn more info about FITE, as well as sign up for a subscription, by visiting FITE.tv Weber's full interview with Wrestling Inc aired as part of today's episode of our WINCLY podcast. It can be heard via the embedded audio player at the bottom of this post, or viewed via the video player at the top.

You can check out past episodes of the WINCLY here. Subscribe to Wrestling Inc. Audio on iTunes or Google Play. Listen to the show via Spotify here or through TuneIn here.