In professional wrestling, the independent circuit (often shortened to the indie circuit or the indies) is the collective name of independently owned promotions which are deemed to be smaller and more regionalized than major national promotions.
Independent promotions are essentially viewed as a minor league or farm system for the larger national promotions, as wrestlers in "indie" companies (especially young wrestlers just starting their careers, and wrestlers in larger Indie promotions) are usually honing their craft with the goal of being noticed and signed by a major national promotion such as WWE, All Elite Wrestling (AEW) (which also owns Ring of Honor (ROH)), or Total Nonstop Action Wrestling in the United States, Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (which is owned by WWE) or Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre in Mexico, or New Japan Pro-Wrestling, Dragongate, All Japan Pro Wrestling, World Wonder Ring Stardom or one of the CyberFight promotions in Japan.
Independent Wrestling Expo
Historical Context
The "indie" scene in the United States dates back to the days of regional territories. The modern definition of the independent circuit came about in the mid to late 1980s and fully formed and flourished after 1990. These promotions initially sought to revive the feel of old school territorial wrestling after former territories either went national, such as WWF, went out of business, or eventually did both, such as WCW.
Deregulation and the Rise of Independent Promotions
After Vince McMahon, seeking regulatory relief, gave in 1989 testimony in front of the New Jersey State Athletic Commission where he publicly admitted pro wrestling was a sports-based entertainment, rather than a true athletic competition, many state athletic commissions stopped regulating wrestling. This obviated the need for complying with many expensive requirements, such as the need for an on-site ambulance and trained emergency medical personnel at each bout.
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After the business was thus exposed and deregulated, just about anyone could be a promoter or a wrestler since no licensing beyond a business license was then required.
Characteristics of Independent Promotions
Independent promotions are usually local in focus and, lacking national TV contracts, are much more dependent on revenue from house show attendance. Due to their lower budgets, most independent promotions offer low salaries (it is not unusual for a wrestler to work for free due to the fact that most promoters can only afford to pay well-known talent). Most cannot afford to regularly rent large venues, and would not be able to attract a large enough crowd to fill such a venue were they able to do so.
Instead, they make use of almost any open space (such as fields, ballrooms, or gymnasiums) to put on their performances. Some independent promotions are attached to professional wrestling schools, serving as a venue for students to gain experience in front of an audience.
Insane Championship Wrestling
The Role of the Internet
As independent matches are seldom televised, indie wrestlers who have not already gained recognition in other promotions tend to remain in obscurity. The advent of the Internet has allowed independent wrestlers and promotions to reach a wider audience, and it is possible for wrestlers regularly working the indie circuit to gain some measure of fame among wrestling fans online.
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The Wrestlers Finding Success Outside of the WWE | THE WRESTLERS
Independent Wrestling Around the World
Australia
Unlike the North American or Japanese products which have large, globally renowned organisations such as WWE and New Japan Pro-Wrestling with several hundred smaller promotions, Australia only has approximately 30 smaller independent circuit promotions which exist in all but one of the states and territories, that being the Northern Territory.
Mexico
Mexican professional wrestling has many more independent wrestlers in proportion to the rest of North America, because of the weight classes prevalent in the Mexican league system as well as its emphasis on multiple person tag matches; just about anyone with ability can emerge from an independent lucha libre promotion into either AAA or Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre and be a champion there.
Independent Mexican wrestlers may use a lot of gimmicks, including some that may be based on copyrighted characters from American television shows, such as Thundercats and X-Men.
Japan
Until 1984, no independent puroresu promotion per se existed in Japan; potential talent went directly into the training dojos of either New Japan Pro-Wrestling or All Japan Pro Wrestling. From 1986 to 1988 the Japanese system went back to the two-promotion system, but then the UWF was reformed and another promotion, Pioneer Senshi, was started.
As the 1990s ended, though, things began to change. Independent promotions began gaining more prominence as they were featured in major specialized media such as Shukan Puroresu and Shukan Gong magazines. In 2000, the first major signing from an independent, Minoru Tanaka by NJPW from BattlARTS, took place; soon after NJPW stocked the junior heavyweight division with independent talent such as Masayuki Naruse, Tiger Mask, Gedo, and Jado.
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Noah admitted one wrestler from the independents, Daisuke Ikeda, to its ranks as well (Ikeda has since left, but other wrestlers from the independents that were signed included Akitoshi Saito, Takahiro Suwa, and Taiji Ishimori).
United Kingdom
For most of the years of ITV's coverage of British Wrestling, the dominant promoter in the United Kingdom was the Joint Promotions cartel, which was originally modelled on the NWA and later amalgamated into a single company. Initially the main rival was the former dominant promotion in the territory, Atholl Oakley's BWA.
By the time of its demise, wrestler/promoter Paul Lincoln had established himself as a major promoter with shows featuring himself as headline heel.
In 1958, when Bert Assirati was stripped of the British Heavyweight Championship, Lincoln formed the BWF alliance of promoters to support Assirati's claim, later recognising Shirley Crabtree as champion. Welsh promoter Orig Williams also used the BWF name, promoting from the late 1960s up until the early 2000s and then sporadically until his death in 2009.
From 1982 to 1995, Williams had a Welsh language TV wrestling show "Reslo" on S4C. Brian Dixon, a referee for Williams, set up his own company Wrestling Enterprises of Birkenhead later renamed All Star Wrestling c. 1984.
However, by the mid-1980s Dixon had won over many wrestlers and fans from Joint who were tired of the Big Daddy-orientated direction of Joint. Eventually this culminated in All Star gaining a TV show on satellite channel Screensport and later, a slice of ITV's coverage from 1987 until the end of ITV wrestling in 1988.
Joint, renamed Ring Wrestling Stars in 1991, dwindled down before closing with Crabtree's retirement in 1995, All Star has continued to be the dominant non-import live promotion in the UK up to the present day. Its principal competitors since that time have been Scott Conway's TWA, John Freemantle's Premier Promotions, RBW and LDN Wrestling.
The Allure of Independent Wrestling
I watch a lot of independent pro wrestling on a monthly basis, and I enjoy it tremendously. I like discovering new wrestlers as a viewer who haven’t been on WWE or AEW TV or known to any degree by mainstream pro wrestling viewers. These pro wrestlers that I’m “discovering” are talented, entertaining, and they are fresh to me as a viewer. They haven’t gotten that first significant “break” yet.
It’s an exciting feeling to me as a wrestling fan to find new wrestlers whose work I enjoy, to follow their careers, watch their matches regularly, and root for them in their aspirations to reach a higher level in the world of professional wrestling.
The independent wrestling scenes in the United States, Canada and UK are full of tremendously talented wrestlers in terms of in-ring work and speaking ability on the mic, and many whom combine both at a very high level.
It’s a fallacy to think the quality of independent wrestling itself is at a lower level just because it’s an independent wrestling promotion. I’ve watched so many independent wrestlers in the last month who through their matches and mic segments are talent-wise capable of being in WWE or AEW right now and would do well if given a chance.
There’s a lot of others too I’ve seen that I would put into the category of having great potential. Perhaps they are newer to being a wrestler and maybe in the first year or two of their careers. However, even at an early stage, they show signs of potential greatness to reach a higher level one day and be stars in either WWE or AEW.
What Else Do I Enjoy About Independent Wrestling Besides Discovering New and Outstanding Talent to Enjoy?
I like watching shows that take place in an intimate setting. It’s a much different experience from watching WWE and AEW, and I enjoy watching the “big leagues” too. In particular, I like watching wrestling shows that take place in front of very large audiences and watching a huge number of fans reacting to something in unison is very captivating to me as a viewer. I can find the general spectacle of a large event is lot of fun to watch. I trace that back to WrestleMania III. My lasting memory of watching that event on PPV is the entrances to the opening match, when all the lights were on in the venue, and the sheer enormity of the audience the way everything was filmed.
Ring of Honor logo
However, there’s something really special to me about seeing a wrestling as a viewer in a smaller setting like on most independent shows, whether it’s watching it on my television, my computer, or seeing it live. For one thing, there’s a lot of crowd interaction. The wrestlers yell at the audience, and the audience members yell back. The two parties acknowledge each other. It feels very personalized and interactive.
Attending independent shows is an experience as well in itself, and I highly recommend it if you’ve never done so. Besides the high-quality matches and a lot of hardworking talent you’re likely going to find, you’re also going to be very close to the ring. For many of us, we will be closer than we’ve ever been before at a show with a major promotion and at a much lower price.
Regarding the current scene of independent promotions, there’s a lot of high-quality promotions out there. They do a very good all-around job presenting their product. They have storylines that carry from show to show. They have champions, factions, good camera work and quality commentators.
Most of the best ones remind me a lot of the footage I’ve watched of certain territory promotions that had weekly TV shows back in the early 80s when those thrived.
A few independent wrestling promotions I recommend are Wrestling Open in Massachusetts, Limitless Wrestling in Maine and MCW in Maryland.
The Roots of Independent Wrestling
I was captivated by independent wrestling and the concept of it when I first saw an independent wrestling show in 1989. At that time, the concept of a standalone independent wrestling show was largely new, and especially the concept of an independent show with a former TV wrestling star on the card being featured in the main event.
The first independent show I went to had Nikita Koloff in the main event and Sam Houston (the younger brother of Jake “The Snake” Roberts) in the co-main event, and both had very recently been on NWA TV shows.
By the mid-90s, the independent pro wrestling scene in the United States would be vibrant. The promotions of the mid-90s carved an identity and a fan base by running both regular shows and developing rosters of local wrestlers, as well as implementing light storylines and feuds as part of the shows.
Back in the early 90s, the only chance it seemed for most independent shows to make a profit enough to survive was to load the card with local wrestlers. Most of them did not have too much experience and often had varying degrees of skill. Some of them were trained formally, and some were not.
The common thread back then was usually most of the local wrestlers were willing to work either for free in the name of gaining experience or only charge a relatively small fee. Then what the promoters would do is spend most of the show budget on bringing in a name wrestler or a legend. If it was a name wrestler, it would be someone very fresh off WWF or WCW TV. They would book them into the main event and have them wrestle one of the local star wrestlers. The idea there was that they would sell more tickets by having a wrestler that was fresh off TV headlining the card.
The independent promoters back then were trying to fill the gap left by the whole disappearance of territory promotions with full-time rosters, week-to-week cohesive storylines, and locally broadcast television shows.
So, the independent promotions of the early 90s, when I first got into it as a fan, weren’t really promotions at all in the traditional sense of the word. I speak this from living it, not just as a fan, but also writing for pro wrestling magazines in the early 90s, profiling a lot of what would now be defined as independent wrestlers.
As a referee, I worked on the independent pro wrestling circuit for much of the rest of the decade. Independent promotions of the early 90s would often just be one-off shows. Many of these promotions, if you could call them that, they only ran one or two shows and no more. Then somebody else would come into the same area, run one or two more shows, and if they drew, they might run a few more, or they might never promote again.
This was much different than the heyday of the territory system of the 60s, 70s, and 80s, before independent wrestling became prominent. By territory, sense, I mean a region typically covering multiple states, where a promotion ran shows in mainly small towns, but usually at least one city, often at the same venue from week to week. These promotions also had a TV show that aired on a local station too. The idea with the TV show was that it was designed to get fans interested in buying tickets to see live events.
This in brief summed up the operating model of the vast majority of professional wrestling promotions in the U.S largely from the early 60s into the 80s.
WWE went national in the mid-80s, and that changed the face of professional wrestling in the United States. A pro wrestler in the late 70s/early 80s WWE, called WWWF at the time, certainly wouldn’t have ever thought that the promotion they were wrestling for, a regional operation that promoted just in the northeastern part of the United States, would change the entire landscape of professional wrestling in the United States in a decade.
Many wrestlers in the transition out of the territory system were not able to find viable full-time work outside of WWE and NWA and a select few other promotions. The end of the territory system and the roots of the path to a widespread independent wrestling scene in the United States are connected to WWE.
The very promotional force responsible for decimating and moving along the collapse of the territory wrestling system is in many ways primarily responsible for the beginning of independent wrestling as we know it.
The path begins when the son of the promoter, who is known to fans as a TV commentator, buys the promotion from his father in 1982. The son will change the name of the promotion shortly thereafter from WWWF to WWF, later to become WWE a decade and a half later.
This promotion will proceed to single-handedly decimate the territory system, and this will usher in a new era where this promotion will ultimately reign supreme and for the most part never have a serious competitor in the world of professional wrestling.
The new owner will do this through a combination of signing top talent from each territory, essentially gutting the rosters, running the same towns with a more loaded talent roster, and securing the local TV slots away from the local wrestling promotions.
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