10 Things WWE Doesn't Want You To Know About Independent Wrestling
ALL IN on the con.
When Daniel Bryan arrived on NXT in 2010, WWE sought to bury both the performer and the stage from which he came.
Per the narrative spun by his new employer, Bryan, a dreaded boring "technical" guy who dazzled all of 50 "dirt sheet" mouth-breathers in "high school gyms", did not possess the stuff that makes a trademark WWE Superstar. This narrative was as infuriating as it was false as it was ironic.
Bryan's challenge of Takeshi Morishima's ROH World Heavyweight Championship (Manhattan Mayhem II, 25 August 2007) drew a crowd well above the four-figure range while, in parallel, a few months prior, WWE closed down its Deep South Wrestling developmental league. It was so poorly-run that promoter Jody Hamilton actually lied about running shows, likely because the outfit wasn't equipped to actually run them.
Even as Michael Cole barked out those infamous burials three years later, the performers WWE wished to push as Superstars in his place - Bryan was always the good little hand - performed to drastically fewer numbers on the barren shores of Florida Championship Wrestling.
Times have changed... to a degree; when Daniel Bryan became a WWE Superstar, drawing on his experience of getting over on shows that actually drew, his popularity drove a recruitment policy rethink. WWE has (very reluctantly) embraced wrestlers honed by the Indy circuit.
There are reasons behind this reluctance...
10. It's Not Just Flippy Sh*t
There is a perception surrounding the independent scene that various WWE-affiliated personnel are keen to massage.
Last year, Randy Orton dove into the "...dive" debate, a furore that stormed Twitter after guardian of the old school, Rip Rogers, posted an indictment of indy wrestling as a formulaic succession of strike exchanges, no sell spots and dives. "Flippy sh*t" is the branded term Will Ospreay printed on a t-shirt to print money. It was an ironic gesture, for Ospreay's fans know that indy wrestling is not merely a succession of spots with little connective narrative tissue.
Independent wrestling, across its vast and rich global stage, incorporates bruising European big lads chopping the f*ck out of each other; technical work on the British Isles that puts over the genuine struggle of hold-for-hold grappling; gory death match genre wrestling not beholden to either a PG rating nor rational-thinking minds; affectionate and funny comedy, as opposed to Trick Or Treat Street Fights; and, yes, untethered high-flying action that 205 Live, even under the more celebratory stewardship of Triple H, literally cannot reach. Across the board, the drama and body language indy wrestling boasts is on another level.
Psychology in wrestling isn't the definition of "logical" narrative as prescribed by WWE between 1984 and 2018.
It is a constantly evolving ideology, the emotional beats of physical storytelling that drive the crowd reaction in order to maximise it - and, since the noises coming from the independent scene are deafening in 2018, independent wrestling boasts more of it than the biggest game in town.