Rob a Promoter and Shoot on a Kid? You ARE Getting Booked

Yep, he's getting booked.
Photo Credit: Scott Finkelstein

Hey, remember that "You Are NOT Getting Booked" meme? You know, the one where the promoter of NWA Smoky Mountain took to Facebook to vent all his frustrations about how shitty the state of indie wrestling had become and tried to provide a Draconian slate of rules for how you can get booked in his promotion? Yeah, good times, man. Good times. Well, while working to the left apparently is a huge no-no and worthy of getting laughed at by not only the promoter but by fans whom he brainwashed into believing he was the arbiter of how people should act backstage, but openly admitting to stealing and proudly choking a kid out to the point where he could have died is totes okay.

Yeah, that video I posted where Team Ambition became Wrestling's Most Wanted was filmed after a NWA Smoky Mountain show, a show, I might add, that featured the three guys prominently in the final matches wreaking havoc and establishing themselves as the new invading faction. Way to show 'em, guys. I guess nitpicky stuff about gear is anathema, but being a locker room cancer is okay.

This reminds me back to when Gabe Sapolsky pretty much had an aneurysm on Twitter because Aaron Epic dared retweet someone wanting him to be booked for a DGUSA/EVOLVE Florida swing. He pretty much spent an entire two days burying the poor kid for poor etiquette, but everyone knew that Lince Dorado actually tweeted Sapolsky himself for a booking. After getting a rap on the knuckles, he actually did get booked for the WrestleMania weekend swing. It didn't matter that Dorado violated protocol. Sapolsky thought he could make money using him, so he booked him.

That's a huge reason why "You Are NOT Getting Booked" was bullshit from get-go one. This wasn't about a code of conduct, ever. It was about some idealistic curmudgeon who wished things would just go back to the idyllic good ol' days venting about the state of workers and how they're disrespectful slobs. I guarantee you that if Kevin Steen showed up at his door wearing his hockey shorts and cut-off tee-shirt looking for a booking, he'd get it. Just like it didn't matter if Davey Richards and his crew ripped off a promoter in Iowa (but hey, they PayPalled him back, so it's okay!) or that Tony Kozina handled a sarcastic comment from a teenager in the least professional and most sociopathic way possible. They put asses in the seats.

The moral of the story is that whenever someone in charge of a wrestling company starts announcing codes of conduct for getting booked, take it with a grain of salt. It's probably bullshit. Promoters are fickle beings, and they'll book people or not book people depending on whether the potential for cash outweighs their violation. It takes a special kind of person to be a wrestling booker, and most of them aren't exactly the most stable person in the world. Vince McMahon is not the anomaly. I'd say someone like Mike Quackenbush is, but even he was reputed to have his own quirks and tiffs in the past.

If you judge your wrestlers by how a promoter portrays them in a meme, you're going to end up being disappointed more often than not. If anything, stuff like "You Are NOT Getting Booked" and the incident in Iowa should put you, as a fan, off to the backstage wheelings and dealings of the wrestling industry. Just pay mind to what's in the ring and on TV. You'll be a lot better off for it.