On a recent episode of Strictly Business, Eric Bischoff shared his perspective on whether promotions should allow their talent to work independent dates.
He expressed his reservations about the idea, emphasizing that he couldn’t see significant benefits for the promotion itself. He then highlighted the potential risks, particularly the possibility of talent getting injured on the indie scene, which could sideline them from the promotion’s roster. Bischoff ultimately argued that, much like in golf, learning from someone less proficient could lead to bad habits, making it challenging to unlearn and improve. He said,
“I wouldn’t do it. Where’s the benefit other than to the talent and to the indie promoter? Where’s the benefit? Where’s the risk? I guess you could probably, if you dig deep enough and hard enough and you wanted to justify your position badly, you could come up with a benefit. Maybe because you’re supporting the indie scene and building some loyalty and following within the independent audience, and that’s not a bad argument. It’s just that the value of that argument is minimal, in my opinion. What’s the risk? Well, the risk is somebody gets hurt on the indie scene and takes them off your roster. I think that’s probably happened in the past. I just don’t see a scenario where the benefits outweigh the risks. As an average golfer, would you get any benefit from taking lessons from somebody who’s less proficient in golf than you? Here’s your answer. What are you going to learn on the indie scene? How are you going to improve on the indie scene? All you’re going to do is learn a bad golf swing, and it becomes twice as difficult to unlearn a bad golf swing and unlearn bad habits than it takes to learn good ones or to learn good golf swings.”
(h/t 411mania)