The Business Savvy Independent Wrestler

During a recent interview with Chris Jericho, the Young Bucks discussed how fortunate they were to be able to make an actual income living off the money they make as independent wrestlers. This has been a thing that has plagued many wrestlers the indy circuit. The lack of money available to work a full time schedule.

The relief of not having to work a second job or limiting themselves to only wrestling on the weekends.

To say that there haven’t been wrestlers in the past who earned enough money on the indy circuit to make a sufficient income would be false. People like Raven, Sunny, Chris Candido and a few others have supported themselves working for smaller promotions. However, they had a big following after working for WWE, WCW and ECW. The popularity of wrestling in the early 2000s was at an all time high. After the boom of the Attitude Era, it became harder to book jobs that paid an adequate amount.

For financial security, WWE became a target for many wrestling in the mid 2000s. The lack of competition and diversity in other companies was at an all time low.

With the emergence of properly ran indy promotions,that delivered a great product and actually captured a big fanbase, online ppvs and other wrestling based content started to pop up. This truly helped Indy wrestlers grab more control of their brand and merchandise themselves successfully.

A wrestler like Colt Cabana in my opinion, is the best example of someone who saw the tide turning in the favor of the wrestlers being able to own their own products and overall their livelihoods and taking advantage of that. Colt has been the leader of the pack when it comes to wrestlers entering into the podcast world after he started “The Art of Wrestling. He brought popularity to that form of media.

He took advantage of sites like Highspots. Contributing to original content like “Five Dollar Wrestling” Colt and comedian Marty Derosa bring hilarious content to matches, which is now very common. His youtube series “Creative has nothing for you”, “Worst Promo Ever” and of course his popular “Wrestling Road Diaries”.Colt is a master of capitalizing on the next wave and fad in wrestling before anyone else does. This will always keep him on top. He doesn’t need to be in WWE to say that he is a success, he’s already proven that on his own.

Many wrestlers have followed suit and with the rise of promotions like Lucha Underground, Evolve, NXT, Progress and PWG, the demand for great talent is tremendous. It puts the power back into the wrestlers hands to decide what promotion they would want to work for and demand to be paid a certain amount.

When those performers have truly made a name for themselves, they have a better chance of controlling the direction of their character in other promotions. Many wrestlers now have two or three successful gimmicks in various promotions. Wrestlers like Ricochet and El Mesias for example. This allows their merchandising possibilities to be endless. It also helps to show how versatile they are to potential bookers.

All in all, this is a great time for wrestlers right now. They have the ability to wrestle around the world and feel great about the popularity of the business and feel like they control their fate in some capacity. As much as they put their bodies on the line, they deserve to feel like there’s some reward at the end of the night. Remember to support Indy wrestling. These wrestlers and promotions help to mold the future in wrestling.