Despite being one of my favorite scenes from the films, I never thought about why the holiday season would’ve been their best season until recently. I can’t imagine office Christmas and New Year’s parties clamoring to have children’s entertainers at them.
For a bit of background, the current promotion I work for is probably one of if not the largest ones in the state. They also run a training program which essentially every single wrestler on their show has gone through. I’ve started wrestling with them for about 2 years now, but recently I’ve been feeling slightly trapped in my position as a wrestler.
Since most of the shows we run consist of “students”, a lot of us are still “paying our dues” and are doing it for the love of the game, so with this, a LARGE majority of the roster isn’t actually paid. However, the option to work for other promotions outside of ours is up to our head coach/promoter who will let us know when he thinks we’re ready to work elsewhere.
With this, working for 2 years in countless matches on legitimate shows without pay and being unable to go elsewhere while being “not ready” without burning the bridge of a training program and promotion I’ve dropped countless amounts of money and hours on has left me feeling a bit trapped and disillusioned with both myself as a wrestler and the promotion as a whole.
But with that rant out of the way, I’m wondering how normal it is for promotions to outright not pay talent through the guise of “training” and “paying dues” on top of feeling unable to work elsewhere because of it.