Out of all the current arguments and discussions in pro wrestling, this is one we don’t hear a lot about. At least, not directly.
It’s been ingrained/preached that the Indies are a proving ground and not somewhere to train as everyone is looking to shine to get that contract with a larger company.
With AEW starting in 2019, it can be argued they brought the Indie wrestling style into the mainstream as their shows are generally more about high spots and who can do the bigger move than telling a story in the ring.
We affectionately call that video game wrestling, and it’s something that the WWE has adopted as well, though not seemingly as much since Triple H took over.
Training or no training?
One of the biggest questions is do wrestlers learn the rules of the business in the Indies or not, and are house shows better? Arn Anderson talked about this on a recent episode of the Arn Show Podcast and his answer wasn’t surprising.
“I don’t think it is as good because when you have an in-house company, you know who the players are, you work with them night after night, and you learn together. Your best intentions are to strengthen your company if you’re all working for a single company and wrestling every day or on the weekends or whatever it may be. I think on the Indies, you don’t have enough guys there with experience to teach the younger guys everything from locker room etiquette, in-ring etiquette, to the different styles and not step on each other’s stuff in the course of the night. Don’t do a guy’s finish in an earlier match as a high spot and all those rules don’t get taught as well as they should I think because there’s nobody there with the experience that has been in a territory for 10 or 15 years. So you know, the best case scenario, I think, even though guys, you know, it lengthened their schedule would be to work for an individual company, run your house shows on Monday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, or Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, or Thursday, Friday, Saturday, or whatever it may be, but have a succession of days to where things you can do last night that didn’t work, well let’s tweak it, and what didn’t happen the next night, let’s tweak it. That’s the way you learn. That would be my first choice.”
He makes sense since you’re not working independently if you’re with a company, so there’s not as much focus on trying to outshine everyone else.
You’re part of a bigger machine and working multiple times a week will help work out those kinks and help to learn the rules and what it is to work with someone to tell a better story.
Do you agree with Arn? Let us know in the comments below.
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