wrestling / Columns
Ask 411 Wrestling: What Makes An Independent Wrestling Company Independent?
Image Credit: ROH
Well now. Welcome to Ask 411 Wrestling. I am your host, Mathew Sforcina, and for some reason I actually thought last week’s edition didn’t go up, and was all set to do a big double shot this week. And yet it did, obviously, in the sea of awesome Rumble content, and lucky I caught it. So there’s that.
Speaking of things that were also there, the Rumble. The undercard ranged from inoffensive through to amazing, but the Rumble… Well it was good up until it wasn’t, basically. But I want credit for calling Roman’s entry!
Anyway, got a question for the column? [email protected] is where you send it.
BANNER~~!
Zeldas!
Check out my Drabble blog, 1/10 of a Picture! Due to illness and heat and illness and world events, I took a short, unintended, unexpected break from the Drabbles. It’ll be back starting Wednesday though, with my now yearly Rumble add on…
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Asshole Shawn in WCW: While the assumption is that Hogan would always win, I can’t help but wonder if Shawn was active and in WCW, if the Kliq was running that strong, if Hogan might not have jumped back to Vince. He got close, supposedly, in 98, so maybe a year or so later, if he sees WCW slipping from him, and Vince needs ammo to fight AssholeShawn in WCW… I’d bet on Hogan winning, but he might well decide a victory by jumping and making a splash all over again is a better deal. Just a thought.
Mutoh/Muta: Oh yeah, that totally counts. You could argue Liger as well, with the transforming into Kishin Liger… APinOz has a good list here.
Al Perez/Black Scorpion on a Clash of the Champions show
Barry Windham/Fake Sting at Halloween Havoc in 1991
Atsushi Onita/Great Nita at several FMW shows
Keiji Mutoh/Great Muta I believe at more than one Tokyo Dome show for NJPW
Jose Luis Rivera would sometimes wrestle as himself in the curtain-jerker and as one of the Conquistadors in some of the WWF’s smaller North-east market house shows
Danny Davis wrestled as Mr X and then refereed as himself on house shows
The Trivia Crown
I’m the only person who’s even won two particular and important championships these days. I’ve been super, royalty, related to nobility and a symbol of spirituality. I’ve battled, teamed and trained with beasts, defeated Hall of Famers, being in groups with demons and share a location connection with Don King. One of my nicknames is closely related to someone Jim Cornette hates and England was a big part of one of my greatest days as a wrestler. Who am I?
Bueller? Bueller? Maraviloso?
I’m the only person who’s even won two particular and important championships these days (IWGP championship and NXT Championship). I’ve been super (Super Rookie), royalty (King of Strong Style), related to nobility (El Samurai de New Japan) and a symbol of spirituality (Child of God). I’ve battled, teamed and trained with beasts (Brock Lesnar), defeated Hall of Famers (Kurt Angle), being in groups with demons (RISE with Finn Baler) and share a connection with Don King (Bomaye/Kinshasa; Don King was the promoter for the Ali-Foreman fight in Kinshasa, Zaire). One of my nicknames is closely related to someone Jim Cornette hates (Supernova, Mike Bucci) and England was a big part of one of my greatest days as a wrestler (Lee England Jr played the violin during your entrance when you beat Samoa Joe for the NXT Championship). Who am I? SHINSUKE NAKAMURA
What am I? I was a Rumble, in which a title was on the line. I saw three entrants in a row share a name, sort of. My entrants also included three ECW Champions (two of one period, one of the other), 2 WCW Champions, and 7 WWE Champions. The guy who eliminated the most people didn’t win, but at least the guy who did win eliminated that guy. One of the first two men in was the first man out, thanks to the third man in. There was a return of someone not seen in the company in three years since another Rumble, as well as a return of someone not seen in the company in nearly ten years. A Rumble that’s the other one attached to a pair, I am what?
Getting Down To All The Business
Jed Shaffer, all round good egg and great writer, who just recently started a new series over on Wrestlecrap, has the first question this week. And it’s philosophical.
Philosophical question. I’ve had this debate now with a few people, and no one can seem to agree.
What makes a promotion an indie?
Ownership/outside financial backing can’t be the sole metric. Saying “no outside financial backers” leads to the idea that WWE could be called an indie, and that’s insane. Every time I try to assemble a group of metrics, it falls apart because some promotion either fails to hit all the boxes but feels like it should (good example, ROH), or hits them all but feels like it shouldn’t (TNA). Is it just that: feel? What’s your thoughts on the issue?
My thoughts are that any company I feel I have a half decent shot of working for at some point is definitely an indie.
Wait, which one goes first?
Why did it take me this long to use that one?
OK, so the origins of indie companies is based less on what they are, as opposed to what they weren’t. The original indie companies were the Outlaw companies, the groups that ran opposed to the NWA’s stranglehold. Companies like International Championship Wrestling, Angelo Poffo’s company, was independent because they weren’t part of the NWA umbrella. Of course, under that logic, the WWF was an indie in 1983 after they pulled out of the NWA.
But in the late 80’s began to modify the term to one that was closer to how it’s used today, and then after 1990 it pretty much became standardised, in that any company that wasn’t WWE or WCW was pretty much an indie, especially as once Vince got all the regulations about wrestling done away with since it was pre-determined, anyone could now run a wrestling show, in theory.
That said, the old model of being a company that didn’t have national TV and wasn’t directly connected to one of the big two doesn’t quite fly, in that sure, CZW isn’t on TV, but it’s sure as hell got a global presence due to iPPV and DVD sales and the like. Does that not count? And if it does count, does that mean only tiny little companies are independent now?
Trying to define the term is the issue, because you do sort of know a company is indie or not when you look at it, but it’s hard to say for sure. WWE isn’t an indie. CZW is. TNA isn’t. PWG is. ROH…
And that’s where things fall over, as I really don’t think ROH is an indie, at least not by the old standards. It’s about par of where Jim Crockett was on TBS, just with syndication across Sinclair rather than the one national network. But then Crockett had syndicated stuff too…
Instead of trying to work out boxes and criteria, I think we need to rework the mentality a little. It’s no longer a case of the Big 2, with the possible chance of a company starting as an indie (Eastern Championship Wrestling) and then becoming one of the Bigs (… When Shane threw down the belt? PPV? TNN?), there are now multiple levels of wrestling.
You have Global companies, WWE, TNA, maybe NJPW. Then you have National ones, ROH mainly. Then Cult, CZW, PWG. And then the small companies, the ones that you see posters for on poles and in shop windows, the ones with no TV, no iPPV, running small towns with maybe a couple guys you might know from larger companies and then mostly green rookies and journeymen and weekend warriors, those guys? Those are the indies.
But by all means readers, this one is very open to debate, I’d love to hear your views on it. Share them below! Here, now, however, I gotta move onto Curious and their questions.
Hi Mathew (did that carefully, I have sent in one previous question but spelt your name with two t’s, which was inappropriately disrespectful).
Nah, it’s fine. I mean, yes, one T is my name, but I answer to Matthew, Matt, Q, Hey You, lots of things. Don’t sweat it.
Just wondering – what is the kayfabe reason for the way people act in the rumble? Why not;
– Just lie on the mat in the corner, hugging the ring post, until there is one other left?
Ah, the Road Dogg strategy. Some people do attempt this strat, but as to why more people don’t do it, the flaw there is that you find it very difficult to eliminate anyone in that position, you will miss chances to toss someone else. Plus, more importantly, while in the short term you’re out of harm’s way, there is the long term problem of painting a bullseye on your back once enough people notice you. If enough of the ring realise what you’re doing, you will be grabbed, dragged, finishered to death and then tossed, and they’ll go back to fighting. It’s low risk, low reward, but the risk is still higher than the reward, for the most part. I have been in one Rumble where the winner did do that though, for most of the thing. He’s now my tag partner.
– don’t enter the ring until well after your name is called?
Again, some people have done this, Big Boss Man in 2000, Nunzio in 2004, Simon Dean in 2005 was a good one too. But I believe they’ve put in a rule after the Axelmania deal, where if you haven’t yet entered the ring when the next number’s buzzer goes off, you’re DQed. Sliding in and then sliding back out on the other hand…
– if you’re the first two in, don’t fight each other now, both try to conserve energy for the business end?
Beyond the generic factors of not being able to trust people and every man for himself and everyone wanting to be the guy, there’s the theoretical optimal strategy in Rumbles to consider.
In theory, your best strat is to be one of the first guys, manage to toss your opponent within the ‘2 minutes’, then have a brief moment to recover before the next guy comes in, and then repeat another 28 times. If you can keep it one on one, and continually toss the next guy before the next next guy comes out, you never have to worry about being jumped from behind, you can focus solely on one target, plus you look like a fucking BADASS.
But mostly it’s because you don’t trust the other guy not to jump you first.
Have an awesome match for free!
APinOz had a bunch of questions to go along with his list from above.
When WWE runs a triple threat tag team match or a 4 Corners tag match, why are there still only two wrestlers in the ring at one time? Why aren’t there 3 or 4 as there would be in the single iteration of the same match?
There have been the occasional match where they’ve done that, since I know someone will say that.
However, they usually go for just 2 in the ring, yes. They do this because it’s less chaotic to plan and to run, you can focus on just the one fight. That’s the actual reason, simplicity and clarity in storytelling. In kayfabe, clearly the rules of tag wrestling overrule the multi-man match rules. Tag team matches have two people in the ring and you have to tag in and out, doesn’t matter if there’s 8 men per team or 4 teams in total, tag matches have two people in the ring only.
Why did WWF/E go from the blue bars steel cage back to the “normal” cage?
They actually used the ol’ blue/black for a fair while after they brought back in the wire mesh, they used it at St Valentine’s Day Massacre in the awesome Austin/McMahon match.
Although it wasn’t as awesome as the opening to the PPV.
I miss creative PPV openings.
The very last time it was used on TV, I think, was the Kennel from Hell match. But even after that, ol’ blue/black would still get used on house shows, as it was much easier to carry around and put together, which was part of the reason it was built, ever since Wrestlemania 2 where it debuted.
As for why they got rid of it, it was a combination of it looking childish, it was occasionally called the Jungle Gym Cage, with the added bonus of being a lot less forgiving. You take a header into ol’ blue/black and it has very little give, apparently, and hurts. Whereas the modern mesh looks cooler/grittier, and yet has more give and hurts less. So they generally choose to use the better looking and safer one, especially after they began to be able to set it up and then lift it up above the ring, that was a big help, once that came in, speed of setting up no longer became an issue. Plus one of the original reasons for the cage’s design, allowing bigger guys to more easily climb up and over, was no longer an issue as they began to allow pinfall and submission.
At what point did the two major federations of the time (WWF and NWA) decide on different rules for their cage matches? As far as I’m aware, NWA/WCW never did the “escape the cage rule” but I recall those rules being in vogue in the WWF as far back as 1980 (Bruno vs Zybzsko) Was that always the rule in WWF?
By most accounts, yes. The very first cage matches were pinfall and submission, the concept of escaping is credited to ‘Classy’ Freddie Blassie, in his feud with John Tolos in NWA Hollywood out of San Francisco. It’s not too difficult to imagine him bring it to Vince Sr. as a way to differentiate the company from their competitors.
Making that the rules also allowed for the two styles of victory that WWF tended to have in cage matches. If the heel won, it was usually by mistake/accident, where they’d take a big bump off a face’s move and end up accidentally flying through the door, or if the face won, it was the blow off of the program, and thus the face would completely destroy the heel and then walk out under his own power, at his own pace, proving just how awesome he was. Backlund was a master of this, his rep as being the best at blow offs had a lot to do with his cage match skills.
Yes, I know he doesn’t walk out in that one. Still an awesome match.
WWF changed in the mid to late 90’s, when they started having multi-man cage matches, and an easier way to determine a winner was needed. Although the first recorded pinfall in a cage I could find was 94, Tatanka and Lex Luger.
When Dusty Rhodes booked the infamous “spike to the eye” angle on NWA TV with the Road Warriors, it was said to have cost him his job and he did move to the WWF a while after. But he did work the Starrcade match with an eye patch to pay off the angle (True Grit) so was it really that one angle that cost him his job? As the booker at the time, did he not know the rules the Turner people had in place regarding ultra-violence on their Saturday show or did he think he was untouchable?
The angle cost him his spot on the booking committee, his match at Starrcade was him as a talent, paying off the angle. He could have stayed on as talent, but he chose to leave soon after since, as the former boss, he didn’t want to work under a committee he had until just recently been the head of.
See, in late 1988, Dusty wasn’t getting along with the Turner brass, for a variety of reasons. He wasn’t drawing gangbuster ratings, the universal get out of jail free card, and then Flair signed a contract where he had more input and control on his angles and finishes, which pissed Dusty off. He suddenly had less control over the World Title. So he responded to this perceived power play by Flair by giving Flair just 5 dates in December, and then making the Starrcade match of Flair defending the NWA World Heavyweight Title against… Rick Steiner. This was then changed by the higher ups to Flair/Luger.
Dusty responded to this in a rational and adult manner by suddenly developing the flu and sitting home for a week. This was a bad idea, as when he came back, suddenly he was losing power and was on the cusp of being demoted. So, he came up with his master stroke.
Now to back up slightly, Turner had laid down a decree for there to be no, or at least very little blood on the shows, apparently after the Original Midnight Express debut angle where Jim Cornette bled a fair old bit for family time entertainment.
(Supposedly, Dusty told them that Jim could get ‘a little’ color, but because it was so cold in the studio Jim’s first couple of cuts didn’t bleed so he ended up blading three times, at which point they all started bleeding)
So the edict came down, for there to be no blood, or at the very least, very little. (Hey, cuts happen). Dusty, sensing he was losing his power, did the eye gouge angle for a few reasons. One, to be a dick, and to stick it to the bosses. Two, to ensure that if he was replaced as booker, he was now suddenly in the middle of a hot angle with the newest badass heel team and the company’s #1 face, Sting, and thus whoever replaced him would be forced to continue pushing him in a major angle. And three, maybe, just maybe, he thought that if the angle drew attention and ratings, it might buy him some power back, maybe. A hail mary, sure, but if it worked…
Over 300 phone calls of complaints to the network made sure it didn’t.
So no, Dusty wasn’t oblivious to the rules, nor was he untouchable. And while this was the angle that got him fired as booker, he was already pretty much on the way out, hence the big middle finger, or in this case, middle eye socket?
Jeff asks about one of Foley’s firings.
Hey Mathew. I recall a segment that opened RAW probably in the mid-00s where Mick Foley and Vince McMahon are sitting on a bus talking. The conversation starts cordially, but after a few minutes Vince is just about to fire Foley from whatever onscreen position he had at the time when Foley interrupts and goes on a long rant about how Vince has caused him to hate the wrestling business and that he quits. Foley then walks off camera and the segment ends with McMahon saying, “See you Mick. Have a nice day.” My question is what was the story behind this? Foley really did leave for a bit after this but there was never any rejoinder or payoff. I remember reading comments from Foley around this time that he really was dissatisfied with WWE, and as awesome as Foley is at selling emotion when he talks, his words seemed more of a shoot than not. Was this a case of Vince saying, “Go ahead and lay into me, it’ll make for good TV,” or was this just a way to write Foley out of his role? What was going on between Foley and the company around this time?
It wasn’t a bus, it was the WWF private jet, November 19, 2001, the night after the InVasion angle ended. Mick had come back in as WWF Commissioner near the end of the InVasion angle, and hadn’t really gone anywhere. There was maybe one week of interplay between him and Regal, but Foley was somewhat extraneous, what with the McMahons, and Flair about to come in. And on a personal level, the relationship between Mick and Vince was apparently somewhat strained at that time. While Mick had started as just an employee, through working closely with Vince in 98, 99, he and Vince had developed a friendship, but that apparently fell apart the more Mick felt he’d done everything and there wasn’t anywhere for him to go, especially as he wasn’t allowed to have fun, his job near the end was to just announce stuff and leave, his talking about there being too many title belts was a personal opinion, apparently. Although it really began to fall down when he pulled out of a proposed Vince/Foley match at WMX7.
So yeah, Foley is a guy who’s always tapped into real emotion for his promos, and even if the two of them were no longer as friendly as they once were, there was still respect between them. I’m fairly certain Vince trusted Foley to cut a promo that, while shootish, was still close enough to the storyline to be ok. And Foley trusted Vince to accept what he’s say and work from it.
Foley was feeling frustrated with WWF at the time, and needed to leave. And while Vince wasn’t begging him to stay, he still had respect for him, and let him leave somewhat on his own terms, or at the very least, on his own promo. So yeah, Vince let Foley lay into him. After all, Vince ‘knew’ he was right and Foley was wrong…
Connor has a simple enough question with a simple enough answer.
Do you know whatever happened to Elijah Burke? He had a good look to him and I loved the Elijah express and Elijah experience
He went to TNA/Impact Wrestling as “The Pope” D’Angelo Dinero, where he wrestled from 2009 to 2012, then he returned to them in 2015 as their main color commentator.
Speaking of commentators, Uzoma?
Based on him replacing Michael Cole as the lead announcer only on the RAW after WrestleMania 31 after he (Cole), JBL, and Booker T were taken out by Brock Lesnar and having been on RAW as the babyface color commentator since 2015, is WWE grooming Byron Saxton to succeed Michael Cole as the lead announcer of RAW and the PPVs?
They were, but after his horrible performance on that show, where they had to send out Jerry Lawler to help him, his stock sank in the company somewhat. While they are still grooming him somewhat, I’m not sure he’s the front runner any more. Michael Cole actually somewhat runs the WWE’s commentary, in that he’s the senior producer for commentary, and is in charge of scouting and hiring talent, as well producing the Raw and SD commentary tables beyond Vince’s input.
In fact, if you like Mauro Ranallo’s work in WWE, you kinda have to thank Cole, since he hand picked Mauro to be the lead announcer on SD. Which leads to conflicting emotions, I’m sure.
Saxton has positive points, he’s been in the ring so he could, in theory, bring actual experience to his commentary, he’s inoffensive, so in theory no-one should hate him, and he’s African-American, which is something Vince really wants on commentary for some reason.
At this point I don’t think Saxton is the heir apparent, but he’s certainly safe. For now.
Phillis has a pretty huge what if.
Assuming the worst comes to worst for Roman Reigns and he is out of the WWE Universe how do you think he would fare on the indie scene?
…
…
…
Sorry, was just lost in a wonderful daydream…
*5/6th of a Chandler*
Now, the problem is, how do you get from “Roman Reigns is #30 in the Rumble because your dreams are stupid and you should hate yourself” to “Joe Anoa’I Live In Lyons This Saturday for Georgia Extreme ‘Rasslin’!” Because the journey has an impact on the landing. Obviously if he does something that leads to him becoming a pariah in the industry, then he’s down to appearing on those true indie shows, working short explosive matches for small crowds.
If, however, he had some sort of disagreement with Vince and walked out on WWE… Well Impact Wrestling would probably back, not a dump truck, but perhaps a modified pick up with an extra deep cargo bed, filled with money. Canadian, but still money! As for the circuit of ROH or PWG or New Japan or what have you… New Japan I could see, Bullet Club would be an obvious get, and places like What Culture probably too, he’d do OK, not great, but OK. And certainly he’d be heel.
But really, unless he did something truly unspeakable like admit to only putting pineapple on his pizza or something, if Roman did leave WWE? He’d not go to the Indies. He’d start playing Boss Henchmen #2 in Rock’s next film, he’d become the Ted Raimi to Rock’s Bruce Campbell.
And finally Andron, like with our first question, demands categorising dammit!
What qualifies a person for the “top face” and “top heel” of the company? Is it my imagination or is WWE’s formula for “top face” and “top heel” is allot more aggressive than TNA’s formula?
Top face is the wrestler or character who is a face and, out of all the face characters, is the biggest star you have out of that list.
Replace ‘face’ with ‘heel’, and that’s what the top heel is.
It’s not a particularly complicated definition, it’s just the application can become complicated, especially as you don’t tend to have both of them at once.
If you have a tippy top face, a Hogan, a Cena, you should, in theory, be building up multiple heels. You would have a top one as such, and he or she should be the one directly feuding with your tippy top face, and then the lower down the ladder you go, the further away from a feud with the tippy top face is scheduled. Your #2 heel should be just about ready to start feuding with them, your #3 should be in the process of squashing jobbers, your #4 should have just debuted, etc.
Similarly but different with a tippy top heel, a Flair, a Bockwinkel, you tend to have lots of faces that are roughly equal. Heels get built up to be fed to top faces, faces get made by top heels. So if you have a tippy top heel, then you should in theory have a bunch of faces who all should be the guy but darn it, that darn top heel cheated and lied and cheated and so on…
As for WWE V TNA/Impact… WWE certainly knows what it wants right now, and right now it was Reigns to be Cena and Rock’s sexy money making love child.
Unsurprisingly, I don’t think that’ll ever happen. Shocking, I know.
And yes, WWE’s formula is a lot more solid and laid out, because they have more experience and also bigger blinders to other options. Impact, Impact tends to change their minds when the wind changes, to their formula is a pile of ideas the size of a dumpster that they mix and match whenever they change their socks.
Once Impact truly gets a hit, then they’ll probably look to recreate it over and over again, just like WWE. Here’s hoping they learn faster than Vince.
And on that wistful thought, I bid you goodnight, and see you all next week!
