Silas Young’s reason for signing with ROH over WWE is a message to all indie wrestlers

From his interview with Busted Open Radio:

“A few months back... I have a few friends who work with WWE and I had a friend who works there call and asked if I would be interested, when my contract is up, coming and working there. And I think the wrestling business is one of those businesses where you absolutely have to have an open mind and you have to always consider all the options. So at the time I was definitely considering the option, and then as time went by, we’re getting a little bit closer to the end of the year, all these rumors and things started popping up on the Internet about me signing with WWE like it was a done deal already. Honestly, at that point, all I had done is have a couple phone conversations and exchanged a few texts.

”Then, just a few weeks back, I had heard from the guy who takes care of contracts for Ring of Honor, and the funny thing is he was under the assumption that I had already signed with WWE. The Internet and the wrestling fans can take a little bit of information and really run wild with it. But what it really came down to is I wanted to stay with Ring of Honor because I feel like what we’re doing there is this really great thing. The freedom we’re given to be ourselves, to take chances, is huge. We’re all performers, we’re all artists, we’re all wrestlers; we all have that drive and determination to be world champion. If you don’t want to be a world champion you probably shouldn’t be a wrestler, in my opinion.

”So a big piece of it is believing in a company that believed in me. For the last five years I’ve been with Ring of Honor, and I’ve been given opportunity after opportunity and every opportunity I’ve been given I took it and I succeeded with. So I thought, considering all the things I have going in my life, considering the fact that WWE -- they’re arguably the top of the game, they’re where everybody wants to be but there’s only so many spots there, and they have so many guys under contract. And then you think about the fact that Ring of Honor has believed in you for so long. I decided to go with what I like to kind of consider the sure bet, the team that’s backed me forever. I wanted to continue backing them.”

While WWE is flush with cash and getting as many talented wrestlers under contract as possible, it’s worth seeing the other side. Global domination is good for the company, sure, and those contracts are indeed lucrative while also offering said wrestlers the chance to work for the biggest pro wrestling promotion on Earth, and one they likely dreamed of wrestling for as a child. The other side of that, though, is what Young mentions here — there are only so many spots available, and already too many hugely talented performers waiting in line to fill them.

Perhaps it’s worth it to sign a big deal and set your family up, but you may also end up in the position Andrade Almas is in. He’s clearly a top level star capable of headlining shows with fantastic matches but there isn’t a ton of room to break into the upper levels even on SmackDown. That means long stretches of not even appearing on television, which gives the fans too much time to forget about him completely, let alone how entertaining he can be.

Hell, even NXT, what used to be a developmental promotion, is stacked with too much talent to know what to do with.

Young’s decision, then, was whether to be a small fish in a big pond or a bigger fish in a smaller pond. That’s a thought process other wrestlers on the independent scene should be having moving forward.