WWE’s willingness to work with independent promotions is in stark contrast to Vince McMahon’s regime, according to AEW commentator Jim Ross.
“WWE ID” is the promotion’s latest program which aims to give independent talent a more direct route to a future in Sports Entertainment.
On a recent edition of his “Grilling JR” podcast, Ross spoke about WWE’s previous handling of independents under McMahon’s regime. He said,
“I think it [WWE ID] is about time. Vince was never very motivated to invest time and money in supporting the indies. It was just — I remember the conversation we had. It was simply, ‘Well Vince, where do you think we got all these other guys?’ We had some college guys as you know, but we had a lot of diversity. You get diversity via selection. It’s just a crazy deal, you want different personalities, you want different body types, you want different ethnicities.”
Ross added that while WWE is doing well to work with independents, talent should be mindful not to enter restricting contracts. He said,
“Well, you’re not really eliminating it because if you don’t sign a contract and you got maybe a letter of agreement or something casual, I can see that being a good recruiting tool because then guys build their confidence, they build their self-esteem, they got a WWE deal in the works. They’d be stupid to sign a contract that prohibits them from wrestling for another company. Don’t do that, that don’t make any sense. But having that WWE offer or agreement, that’s good for those guys. It’s good for the talent.”
WWE has already announced three signings to the WWE ID program with a fourth to be announced at this weekend’s Reality of Wrestling event.
