Secret Power Players Pulling Strings In Wrestling Today

5. Barry Bloom

THAT Bryan Danielson shot
AEW

You’ll likely be aware of Barry Bloom, the shared agent of the Elite, at this point: the Young Bucks, when shooting supplementary content for social media, have made him canon in AEW. As first reported by the Super-J podcast of Voices of Wrestling, Bloom “hooked up” with Kazuchika Okada to land him a huge money deal with All Elite Wrestling. Bloom also secured the best offer for Will Ospreay. 

He is the preeminent super-agent in professional wrestling, and has occupied that role for decades: he negotiated Scott Hall’s landmark deal with WCW in 1996, and facilitated Chris Jericho’s jump from WCW to the WWF three years later. 

Always vast, his influence could become yet more pronounced as the war between WWE and AEW “rolls on”. 

WWE wrestlers have been underpaid historically, and if they were aware of that, there was still f*ck all they could do. They couldn’t exactly earn more money elsewhere - until now. 

Okada and Ospreay received better offers from AEW than WWE, which, it was widely reported, offhandedly mumbled WrestleMania as an incentive. WWE is quite disgustingly cash-rich. Now that the “Bloom deal” is embedded in the consciousness of pro wrestling, and those salaries are a big news story picked up by the mainstream media, will the key talents in WWE realise what they should be getting? 

WrestleMania might be more significant than a story being finished this year: is it really more important than a retirement fund?

 
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Contributor
Contributor

Michael Sidgwick is an editor, writer and podcaster for WhatCulture Wrestling. With over seven years of experience in wrestling analysis, Michael was published in the influential institution that was Power Slam magazine, and specialises in providing insights into All Elite Wrestling - so much so that he wrote a book about the subject. You can order Becoming All Elite: The Rise Of AEW on Amazon. Possessing a deep knowledge also of WWE, WCW, ECW and New Japan Pro Wrestling, Michael’s work has been publicly praised by former AEW World Champions Kenny Omega and MJF, and current Undisputed WWE Champion Cody Rhodes. When he isn’t putting your finger on why things are the way they are in the endlessly fascinating world of professional wrestling, Michael wraps his own around a hand grinder to explore the world of specialty coffee. Follow Michael on X (formerly known as Twitter) @MSidgwick for more!