r/WredditSchool

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.

I'm not gonna get into a whole bunch of details but back in 2025 I posted here, ranting about the place I trained and worked shows for. Ever since then, it's been the same stuff over and over. And despite you all giving me advice to just leave, I was genuinely afraid to. Well, I finally saw my opportunity after fully paying them off last month.

I broke the news to them the day after a show and it's safe to say, I made the right decision. They have their minds made up that I just don't want to put in any work, despite me actually telling them why I'm leaving. I now know I only made like 3 real friends there because everyone else turned their backs on me (including my tag partner) the second it was said that I left.

Not to mention, one of the owners told me that I should quit the business for feeling the way I do. Nonetheless, I just wanted to give an update on that whole thing. I'm training somewhere else now and it's night and day in how I'm treated. Thank you all for reading once again, and the next time I post on here, it'll be something worth actually talking about.

I kinda already put this stuff that was going on with me in a comment on someone else's post responding to them, but I truly am just looking for outside perspective to see if maybe I'm just thinking too much into things or if I should justifiably be annoyed with these things. I'm thinking about taking a full step away from the promotion because I feel disrespected and undervalued, and feel unwanted there.

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I've been at my promotion almost 7 years, started training in July 2019. I started training at the school closest to me that I essentially grew up going to due to family history there. When I started, it was fun. No complaints from me as to the training specifically. I picked up the craft and attended seminars, participated in the setup/teardown stuff every outside show we went to, everywhere we went for years. I spent countless hours at training even when it hit the point I was seen as more of eyes to help the newer students than anything.

I didn't start skipping ring setups/teardowns until about 8 months ago. There had been newer classes coming in, people were able to do it themselves and at that point I had thought I had paid my dues, because my peers who I started with had long stopped coming to trainings and ring crew work wayyy before I did and weren't catching any flack for it. I finally listened to my family and tried to prioritize my shoot job since wrestling wasn't making me much money back working an outside show once every couple months. Prioritizing my shoot job, my attendance at ring crew work days was less and less, because I would either be getting off work exhausted from 12 hour shifts, or would be waking up in just a few hours to go to work the next day once it was all done. I ended up getting onto a bigger promotion in a nearby area that's televised around this same time, out of pure luck I'd think, and when that happened I felt everyone become very cold to me and not so friendly. I felt eyes on me and could hear people mouthing off about me, and even was getting told people were running their mouths when I wasn't around about me.

Low and behold, suddenly, I stop getting booked. (Coincidentally, after I tell him I'm atleast gonna be needing some kind of gas money. I tried to ask for 20-30 and got told, "there's no way I can do that every week" so I bargained down to $10. Even tho he will pay other girls coming in $50-60.) But my bookings are Not just like, 'oh we just had a full card this week or your opponent cancelled so we didn't have anything else for you.' But every week. On a show where the promoter said 'if you are looking to work and we have room we will always find something for you to do for reps.'

"sorry full card" "sorry opponent cancelled and couldn't find another girl in time." "we don't have anything for you right now story wise" "these shows were already booked up"

While normally valid reasons, it was clear these were lies, because matches would be added, cards would change on a whim every show. If other people showed up, they got booked and PAID.

After a while I get told by another worker that apparently me being pulled from bookings is because I haven't been coming to ring setup/teardown. Then I see on the facebook group for the workers at the show that the promoter/owner posted "This isn't aimed at anyone, but we will not be prioritizing workers who don't help setup/down the rings at outside shows."

I felt very targeted as I had been the only one being pulled from shows. I didn't have an issue with him wanting people to help, but he never said anything to me about it, and my peers never got pulled from things over it either. So why was it only me being punished?

I started coming back to setup and teardowns recently, like the last 2-3 months because if that was the issue I was going to help so he couldn't use that excuse and I could get booked again. But I had to beg for them to bring women in for me to defend the women's title against after the first 3-6 months of its existence. It got to a point I had to beg for a women's title match on one of the big outside shows, and because "there was no room" we got put on the preshow, and then ANOTHER MATCH GOT ADDED.

At this point I'm very fucking annoyed. The booking group then decides to get rid of the women's title. I'm asked about it and how I feel about it, but in my mind, the promoter already decided he's getting rid of it, it doesn't matter if I like it or not, I do what the promoter says. So I'm like "okay well I guess cause it aint my show, I have to be okay with it."

The women's title is discarded, in a dumb angle where I don't lose it but someone steals it and it's just *gone* from the show altogether. At this point my booking stopped almost entirely. I showed up every week and was never booked. Even though I gave them all my dates. I told them if they needed any spots filled I'd work. Nothing.

Come to last week, I show up, not booked. Which was fine, I had a booking fall out that day so I had just showed up to hangout with wrestling friends and watch the show in the back. I'm looking at the upcoming cards and asked if they had missed where I gave dates. They said no. They said that they were working on trying to have a fresh reset for me on the show, as I had brought it up as a concern that may be needed for me character wise. They agreed but didn't know where to start. The show runner then kept mentioning how the girls were too expensive, how they didn't give enough dates, how they couldn't find affordable ones.

So I asked "why does it have to be girls?"

Then I get told that the show runner (not the promoter, this guy's like the 'writer' for the show)_is not a fan of intergender matches. And I'm confused, because I've worked primarily GUYS the whole time I've been at this show, because I was the only girl consistently in training. Almost 90% of the lockeroom was wrestled me on the show in the past or even put me over (not that wins and losses matter, but they've worked with me before is the point). I rebutted this and the show runner just said "well were trying to only have you work other girls preferably".

At this point I'm pissed off. I feel disrespected, and feel like they're trying to find every reason in the book to not use me on the show anymore. My feelings are hurt because its where I started, but not I feel like they don't want me there for some reason or another. I'm not enjoying my time there at all anymore and am really only there to finish out story stuff with my family there.

Maybe I'm overthinking it. But it feels extremely toxic and I feel I'm being pushed away. What should I even do at this point? Should I leave?

I feel like my biggest hole is socials. Why do y’all post? How do you know what to post? Do you post different stuff on Facebook than you do on X or IG? Do you care about metrics?

I feel like I might overthink socials, which leads to me posting less. I end up not posting much outside of flyers, sharing companies/friends posts, and the occasional picture

I was watching tape I have of a show 2 years ago where my champion kept saying "Open Challenge" in his promos in the 2 month summer gap between shows, so day of ribbed him and had another guy come out to face him. When the guys music hits the champ looked right at me running music and said "ARE YOU KIDDING ME!?!" as he had spent 2hrs planning a match with my #2 guy, and then I flipped it (#2 was in on it, he thought it was hilarious).

Also got put in a 20-man random draw for matches one night (training show on Wednesdays). Every was assigned a #, higher # went over. I was #1. When it got to semi-main, #1, #2. #3, and #18 still hadn't been selected! I looked at #2, said "see ya out there", got my name called, and he was called as my opponent! He had spent the whole night memorizing everyone's spots, but I refused to do it with anyone since the point was to work on the fly and get better. We locked up, I said "wanna work it for awhile" and he said "oh yeah" and we stayed in it for most of the match. I love lockup matches!

I think my record is 12 minutes.

I believe that before any of us are workers, wrestlers, trainees, refs, etc, we are fans of wrestling first. An old trainer of mine once said, "We're all marks. We're the biggest f'n marks".

Let's take this day and talk about wrestling as fans. Be it current WWE storylines, promos or matches you just absolutely love. Feel free to post links in the comments as well. Let's not forget why we got into this business!