10 Things WWE Doesn't Want You To Know About Independent Wrestling
5. There Are Better Wrestlers On The Outside Than In...
Possibly.
It's a question worth exploring in a think-piece in and of itself: are the best wrestlers found outside of WWE, or does the ceiling inhibit their growth once inside?
Finn Bálor was a critical darling on the indy circuit because he was permitted to marry his spectacular arsenal with a very vicious heel game. At Extreme Rules, the story of his match with Baron Corbin centred around his relatively small size. Corbin was bigger, and thus Bálor did well to merely survive. Kevin Owens, in his Extreme Rules match, was a coward whose signature offence was rendered impotent. On the indies, he was a sadistic sociopath who wrestled gruesome and incredibly dramatic battles.
Neither man cracks the top 25 wrestlers on the planet in 2018. Just four years earlier, they were the two most sought-after around.
The answer to the aforementioned question is both. In such an oppressive creative environment, in which the same handful of road agents produce the same performers on a mass-produced schedule, the quality of those wrestlers becomes virtually indistinguishable. If the wrestlers in WWE are as good as those lighting up the indies - WALTER, Will Ospreay, Matt Riddle, Timothy Thatcher - they aren't permitted to show it.
And that, sadly, is more or less the same thing.