So after reading the Golden Boy's latest column I started thinking about a few different things. Variety being one of them. In November, it will mark 3 years that I've been actively wrestling. Since then I've had the opportunity to meet a lot of people and wrestle a lot of different places. I was thinking about starting out in Humboldt in front of 10 people or less and having what I considered at the time a wild brawl. I was in a six man tag with my training partner, Kid, being across from me. Well long story short, I ended up running off the apron to clothesline him on the floor and throw him into the "crowd" to sort of springboard off the guardrail and deliver a crossbody of sorts. To us, we might as well have been in front of 10000 people at WrestleMania! Well what's this have to do with variety? We were trained to wrestle...not fight. This was way outside of our element at the time.
We went on to have matches in Selmer and Savannah against Bobby Eaton and Brickhouse Brown and eventually against each other. The matches against each other were what I consider classics of our young career. I felt the crowd in the palm of our hands as they hung on everything we did! It was a great feeling, it was some of the most technical and basic wrestling with great psychology and they ate it up, different from the fight in Humboldt.
After that we went on to Nashville, Ripley, and several places in Arkansas. Most notably Batesville, where once again, we went out of our element. Technical matches, sure...brawls, sure...highflying, now this was different! I had never wrestled anyone like Ray Ray or Tommy Wayne at this point and our matches were great. It was the first time I had the chance to fly to the outside and took bumps I didn't know I was capable of.
After some time we come to Mississippi. Columbus being the point of interest here as I got in the ring with Tommy Rich. A man I grew up with from a very young age. Our match was set to be a tag but with the stipulation of "no rules" added to it. The match was exactly that...I took a nasty bump into an empty section of about 15 chairs as well as fighting all over the building. Similar to Humboldt but this was the entire match not just a few sections. Recently in Selmer I had the privilege of wrestling Steve O in a street fight. From diving off of and eventually into the bleachers to being hit multiple times with a steel chair, it truly was a wild brawl as well. And its been one of my favorite matches this year. Another one of my favorite matches from this year was against Greg King Jr, we didn't do a whole lot but again, the people went nuts for what we did. I would call this more of a "Shakespeare" type match with a few spots thrown in, again basic but different.
See the theme here? Variety is not only the spice of life, but its what makes a quality wrestler. (did I just put myself over? I think so)
Whether its brawling, technical, high flying, comedy, or anything else...a good wrestler can do it all and hang with the best. Size and weight shouldn't limit what you do in the ring because that's what was done 25 years ago. What should limit you are your own capabilities. What limits you is your desire to be the very best and to learn new skills. Whether you want to learn to chain wrestle because all you know is a front facelock or you're 6'2" 230 lbs and want to learn to fly to the outside, you CAN do it if you try hard enough and work on it.
That's why I feel no one truly understands NEW and proceed to knock it. It's different, yes. The only difference between NEW and any show up the road is we use talented people that can do damn near anything that's asked of them. If you're 180lbs but work like you're still 220, you won't go anywhere. Being able to adapt to any style is a requirement in today's business. A requirement that not many possess, in this area or independent wrestling in general. It doesn't matter how much weight you've lost or how good you look, if you are only good at one style of match, you're goin to be stuck and always wonder why. Why did they not sign me? Why have I been doing this for so long and basically gotten nowhere?
So what have we learned today? Looks are a big part of today's business. But so is having a variety of skills. Being able to adapt and do anything will further your career in the best possible way. I honestly don't believe I would not have been given the chance to work for WWE if I had not had these experiences and learned a variety of styles, much less done it in only 2 and a half years. So never stop training guys and girls, only good things can come from it. Think of it this way, there is always going to be something you can't do that someone else can, and what's stopping you from doing it too? You.
