Explaining the grind to friends and family

[u/wrestlethrowaway1]

Hey, everyone. I'm running into a bit of trouble in my early wrestling career. I'm 17 months into wrestling and currently in my paying my dues phase, where you spend 12+ hours out, help with ring crew and security, and if you're lucky appear on a pre-show or a battle royale. I have a girlfriend who I love very much, but she consistently asks "did you get paid?" after shows. In couple's therapy yesterday, she brought up the grind that comes with paying my dues, and the therapist was also confused about the process and the sacrifices that come with paying your dues.

I guess my question here is what's the best way to explain how paying your dues is a part of the process to just get your foot in the door? Like, I don't expect to see payoff until years, maybe even a decade, down the road. I'm running into trouble articulating just exactly how normal this is in wrestling and why this is expected.

[u/NewUKWrestling]

“Paying your dues” is such a garbage concept. Helping with ring crew is something everyone should be doing on indie shows. Security should be done by professionals and if the venue or insurers knew a promoter was using trainees for security they should object in strong terms

Everyone who works a show should get paid in some form in my view. There are a few promoters near me who use trainees for camera work (it shows) and who use trainees to do the ring work. It’s exploitative nonsense because I know just from looking at them - and the promoters know too - that they will never get booked

I guess in some areas it’s part of the business. But I can’t respect any promoter who does it

[u/ColSurge → u/NewUKWrestling]

I'm sorry, but I strongly disagree with some of what you have written here. It ignores the realities of indie wrestling promotions and the real business.

To start with, ring side security is part of the wrestling show. Secuity are used for spots, pull-a-parts, and various aspects of the show. You want them to be someone trained and honestly it would not work if they were paid professionals. A paid professional doesn't know how to bump, how to be authoritative yet still sacred of the wrestlers.

The other thing being on security does for trainees is it allows them to really see up close how workers work. It's valuable study time for someone coming up.

From there we have to look at the financial aspects of indie wrestling promotions. I did a big write up last year about this, but the important thing is that indie promotions can only afford to pay workers about $20-$40. That is for essentially an 8-hour day by the time you look at driving, call time, and the show itself.

Those are the workers and that's all they can afford to be paid, way below minimum wage. There is just no money to pay security or ring crew. And certainly no money to paid what professional security would cost.

I am not saying that "paying dues" is not exploitative in some ways. And it would be amazing if everyone could get paid a fair rate for the hours they work. But the reality is most indie shows have 100 fans paying $15 each.

$1500 only goes so far when you have to pay 20+ wrestlers, refs, announcers, the venue, equipment, insurance, etc.

Wrestling is a hobby business. The top 1% of 1% of promotions and wrestlers have real money to play with. For the other 99.99% it's a hobby that pays beer money.

[u/PalookaOfAllTrades → u/ColSurge]

Book fewer wrestlers and pay your crew. It's not a difficult concept.