Joe Alonzo signing with TNA should have been an easy congratulations from his buddies Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows. Instead, it turned into them asking a much less glamorous question: what does that wrestling contract actually guarantee?
Speaking on Talk ’N Shop, Anderson and Gallows discussed Alonzo’s new TNA deal after he apparently wondered why one of them hadn’t congratulated him yet. The answer was that they wanted to know exactly what kind of deal he had signed before celebrating it.
“He asked me, he goes, ‘Why haven’t you congratulated me yet?’ And I said, ‘Well, I got to get information on what kind of contract it was.’”
For them, simply hearing that somebody has “signed” doesn’t tell the whole story. There’s a big difference between a salaried multiyear contract and getting a certain number of dates for an agreed amount of money.
“I want to know. I want to know what kind of, if since we’re friends, is it a salary deal or is it… I’m not going to just congratulate somebody for signing a deal if I don’t know the numbers.”
That quickly turned into a debate over whether a per-date agreement should even be talked about the same way as a traditional wrestling contract. Technically, sure. There’s a piece of paper and somebody signed it. But that wasn’t really their point.
“Do you consider it a contract if you sign something and it says, ‘We’re going to give you this amount of dates for this amount of money’? I don’t. That’s a contract. Now, sure, in the contract sense, but it is not, ‘Hey, Karl, I own you and I’m going to pay you this exorbitant amount of money each year for the next three years.’”
What Anderson and Gallows really questioned was the security that comes with these deals. A wrestler can sign for a certain number of appearances, but if the promotion decides it doesn’t want to use that wrestler anymore, they believe the piece of paper might not mean much.
“And also, I guess if you are looking for that security of, ‘Hey, they’re going to keep using me,’ but wrestling contracts don’t have that. So, I guess my opinion on it is it’s hard for me to understand why you sign a per-date deal because if they decide they’re going to stop using you anyway, they’re going to stop using you.”
Then came the line that pretty much summed up their feelings about the whole thing: “Obviously, they’re legal toilet paper.” To explain what they meant, they imagined a wrestler signing a deal for 12 shows at a specific rate. Everything sounds great until the promoter gets three shows in and decides they’ve seen enough.
“And you say, ‘Great.’ Why do we got to write that down? Because what if I say after show three, like, ‘Hey, you were late and you looked like shit. I can’t use you anymore.’”
Alonzo’s TNA signing was what started the conversation, but Anderson and Gallows weren’t necessarily knocking his particular deal since they didn’t establish exactly what he signed. Their issue was with the bigger idea that the word “contract” automatically means a wrestler has landed long-term financial or job security.
For Anderson and Gallows, the announcement is the easy part. They want to know what’s actually written on that piece of “legal toilet paper” before they start popping champagne.
Do you agree with Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows about per-date wrestling contracts, or is having something guaranteed on paper still better than working without a deal? Let us know in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
