A Career In Pro Wrestling: Reality Check

Professional Wrestling is now one of the most popular, exciting, and highest paying sports in the world today. And with that popularity and high pay, there is a whole new generation of aspiring young people who are seriously interested in one day becoming a Professional Wrestling Superstar.

Wrestlers are some of the most famous celebrities in the world, and they do make tons of money, and their lives are pretty exciting. But most aspiring wrestlers do not realize that the life of a pro wrestler involves tremendous work, dedication, constantly traveling, and frequent painful injuries. Being a pro wrestler may seem glamorous, but it’s anything but.

Most people only see wrestlers once or twice a week on television and think that’s all they do. What these people don’t get to see are all practices and rehearsals that are not televised. During these rehearsals and practice a wrestler is in the ring every day for hours at a time. And if you thing that’s not hard work, go to a wrestling school and go at it for about 15 minutes.

Here is a typical day on the road for a WWE Pro Wrestler:

You wake up at 7:00 in the morning. You get to the airport at 8:30. You take a flight across the country and arrive at 11:00. After renting a car, checking into a hotel room, and something to eat, it’s 1:00. Time to go to a photo shoot. So you drive to a mall and sign autographs until 3:00. It’s time to head on over to the arena. Getting through traffic, you might make it by 4:30. After you eat something and do a short workout, it’s 5:30. At that time you go talk to one of the bookers and he goes over your match with you. If you can find the time, you and your opponent do a quick run down of what’s going to happen. By then it’s 7:00 and it’s time to go on. You wrestle a match and leave the arena at 10:00. You get to the hotel by 12:00 and get some sleep before you do it all over again in the morning. Now find time to workout and keep the marvelous body a wrestler has. And you want some sort of social life don’t you? Good luck.

But if you are determined, it isn’t impossible to become a wrestler. The first thing you must do is go to a local wrestling school. Prices vary between schools, but you can expect to pay a couple of thousand dollars for a good one. Ninety nine percent of people never make it past the school. Imagine high school football, except twice as hard. The trainer doesn’t care if you quit or not, he’s just doing his job. They let you know you’re going to get hurt, that’s unavoidable. Most people walk away from the school after the first week with painful bruises galore, sometimes worse. If you’re one of the truly tough and lucky, then it’s time for the independent federations.

You’ll be working once or twice a week, in front of 100-300 people making $25 a night or sometimes nothing at all. This is to work on your ring skills and your personality. Some guys find themselves in these small leagues for years, others never make it past this stage. Now if you’re strong and lucky enough to get yourself booked in a show and a pro wrestling manager happens to be there, you have a slight chance he might like you. If he does, then you’ll be receiving a phone call or letter asking to wrestle a dark match. A dark match is a match done the night of a TV taping, but is not aired. They’re done to pump up the crowd.

So you go to the big company, meet all the wrestlers, wrestle your match, and go home. Nine out of ten times you just wait for that to happen again. If you’re really a lucky one, you’ll get a phone call to come back and wrestle some more dark matches. And maybe, just maybe, you’ll get signed by a major company, such as World Wrestling Entertainment. This is the equivalent of the Major Leagues in Baseball.

So as you can see, being a wrestler is a tough job. Even if you do make it through school and get hired by WWE, will you be able to handle the schedule? That’s something you have to ask yourself before you pursue this career.