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Ten Years Later: Loyalty, Shiny Turds And Being Average

Posted: Dec 29th 2011 By: CMBurnham

Back in 2002, former OPW wrestling promoter Rocco Valentino wrote a very cryptic message on the Oklahoma Championship Wrestling website about ?shining turds.? The idea of shining a turd means that no matter what you do and how you try to dress something, no matter how much shine you put on it, if it?s a turd it will always be a turd. It is the same with people. The majority of people involved with indy wrestling are people with little class or character. Most of them do not have professional jobs. Most of them are not well educated. It is not a surprise when they show no loyalty to anyone but themselves.

It turns out Rocco wrote that blog about Sonny C and myself because he had been told a rumor that Sonny and I were about to start our own wrestling company. In fact, the people starting their own fed in these rumors ended up actually being the SRPW people, but second hand information can get those kinds of details wrong. But Rocco took that potential disloyalty from two guys he had invested time and effort in as a major slap in the face and I certainly don?t blame him. Thankfully the whole mess got straightened out and Rocco realized Sonny and I were loyal to him.

In 2003, after the demise of Oklahoma Championship Wrestling, the reason many of us did not join the other Tulsa fed (known as SRPW) was because of loyalty to Rocco. Something just didn?t feel right about working for a federation that had been regarded as the Anti-Rocco fed. Eventually Rocco started Tornado Lucha Libre. The crowds just never really showed up. SRPW was running monthly shows at places like the indoor fun fair in front of hundreds while some nights at TLL, we were luck to sell 20 tickets. But we (the Compound guys) stayed dedicated to our fed. Loyalty in wrestling is a two edged sword. On a much larger scale, you can look at someone like ?Sting? or Shawn Michaels or Tommy Dreamer who stayed loyal to one fed for many years, while most guys jumped back and forth for big contracts. Were they better off? Maybe not financially, but you had to respect their faithfulness to the company that made them who they were.

I have a distinct mindset about indy wrestling back in the lucha libre days. Some people say that you do not get better wrestling in front of the same crowd week after week against the same opponents. These critics argue you have to endeavor into other states and other feds to learn all you can. That position does makes sense to a certain point. But I always set my goal to be more than just another wrestler for a promotion. I tried to stay loyal to one fed and bust my ass to help put as many people in the seats as I could. I took pride and a sense of ownership in that fed just like I would at my everyday job. I helped train the green guys to help make their matches better instead of just mocking them behind their back. I figured the whole show would be better if every guy improved. I went to each veteran worker I saw every week and soaked up all the knowledge I could from each of them. In Tornado Lucha Libre, there were guys like Rick Styles, Rocco Valentino, and Anthony Jackson backstage. There was so much I learned from these guys. They had had hundreds more matches than me. I never felt like I had learned everything there was to learn from these guys. (By the way, the greatest compliment you can pay a veteran is to ask him to share his knowledge with you)

I am a firm believer that a wrestler?s loyalty will have new fans coming each show to see what the buzz is all about when they focus on putting on a great product. My mentality is also that if your home fed is putting on a great show week after week, eventually you will have new talent from all over lining up to get on the card. I did not want to have to drive to Texas to get better. I wanted to be a component of the fed that the best workers in Texas or Arkansas would drive all over to work for. Take IZW for example. They are considered the best produced federation in the state. They can afford to cherry pick talent now. They have guys driving 8 or 9 hours just to manage, referee, or work a dark match. But some people are not about being loyal to a federation. They want to be journeymen who can say they have worked for every known wrestling federation here is. They do not care if one night they work as a heel, and the next night (less than 10 miles away in front of many of the same fans they worked the night before) they are working as a baby face. Screw Kayfabe. What should I care if I am your champion and I go lose all the time in another fed? So what if I make your belt look meaningless.

I remember Rocco had a bunch of guys from OKC always trying to get booked on the OPW cards. It was because he and a few others took the time to build up their core product. They weathered the dark days where only a hand full of fans showed up and eventually OPW had sellout crowds for two years straight. Back in 2001, while I was working for OPW, I once asked Michael Faith (an OKC wrestler who frequently was booked on Rocco?s OPW shows) about coming down to OKC sometime to work. He told me it would not be worth my time and that I was going to get better by staying put in Tulsa. In fact, he was bringing care loads of OKC guys like Dynamite Extreme, Ryan Styles, Draven Cross, Halo, and Tyler Bateman each week. All these guys were willing to drive hours to be part of the buzz going on in Tulsa wrestling. Back then I never had a shortage of decent guys to work with each week.

Ultimately, I do realize nobody (who is not a genetically altered beast or a famous athlete) is going to make it to WWE developmental without working in a few different territories. I guess the goal is to get on with Ring of Honor, which is where the elite indy workers like Brent Albright are at. But I also think that you should make sure you are getting the most out of where you are at before you go looking for more somewhere else. All too often I have helped train a guy who just decided one day that he had learned all he needed to learn from me and the other trainers because he was finally in the show.

In reality, if you are an average worker and you work the same average match in Texas, Oklahoma, and Arkansas, you are still going to be average. The only difference between being average in Oklahoma and being average in another state is that you will have spent a hundred bucks or so in gas to go be average in front of a new crowd.