So six months ago, I was in a bit of a rut and decided to reach out to a friend I went to school with who wrestles for a local promotion. I asked him how he got his start and told him I always had an interest in somehow working in the business and he told me if I wanted, he would talk to the owner of the promotion and get my foot in the door.

A couple of weeks later the owner invited me to a show and spoke with me after it was over and by the start of August I was working with them. I started off in a staff role to prove to them I was reliable. After a couple of shows, the owner invited me to train. I'm still nowhere near ring ready, but I've been doing it long enough that it hurts less after each training session and I've learned a few things I never knew as a fan.

Our promotion runs shows in Northwest Kentucky and Southwest Indiana, usually out of five cities in the area. We have shows most Saturdays, someone did the math once and ever since the promotion started to branch away from its "home city" they average 43 shows a year. At least once a month, we have shows we put on Youtube, Hysteria. We had our 100th episode of Hysteria in December and our 101st episode is set to release Tuesday.

We average about a hundred people per show at our Kentucky shows, and about one fifty at our Indiana shows, the city in Indiana simply has a bigger venue. I'm told the largest crowd the company has had since 2011 was just over 650 people. Since I joined our largest crowd was 406. We have over 10k Facebook fans as well.

On the flip side, I've experienced our version of the old "wrestling in front of 50 people in a bingo hall." Only difference was ours was in a National Guard armory and a Salvation Army rec center.

Most of our talent consists of guys who have been with the company since they were putting on shows in a ring in the backyard to entertain themselves over ten years ago, though once the owner got a promoter's license in 2011, they have brought in name talent. Before I got there, they have had names such as Matt Hardy, Carlito, James Storm, and Abyss to wrestle and names such as Vader and Tatanka for meet and greets. Since I started we have brought in names ranging from Tommy Dreamer to Joey Ryan to Corey Storm to Glacier (yes WCW Glacier) to wrestle and had names such as Bobby Eaton and Jimmy Hart for meet and greets, among others. While neither are mainstream names, Corey Storm and Myron Reed both trained and given some of their early breaks with the promotion.

I've also given a hand to a couple promotions that our guys have worked for, giving me the opportunity to meet a really diverse set of characters.

So by this point, you may be asking yourself what the point of this is? Well its partly to share some stories about my experiences as a staff member/trainee for an independent wrestling promotion, partly to answer questions you may have and share my somewhat unique perspective, and somewhat to just vent about the bad shit you see, and believe me you do see some bad carny shit.

So please feel free to ask anything you wish, and please allow me to indulge myself a little as I talk about my journey thus far and going forward.

Cheap plug for our Youtube channel.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCan...ODq6w5gv_YuHZQ