Keith Elliot Greenberg - Too Sweet: Inside the Indie Wrestling Revolution

The Bad Boy Joey Janela was nervous. He paced. He sat. He stood up. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, tapping it against the inside of his palm. With the butt shoved under his lip, he stepped outside the Sears Centre Arena and lit up.

He could see the cars converging on the utilitarian glass and concrete building, angling for spots in the parking lot. From a distance, he heard the doors creaking open, slamming shut, voices talking, laughing, chanting.

Wooooo!

After 12 years in the wrestling business, the sounds were familiar to him. So was the general look of the crowd: long hair and shaved heads, motorcycle boots and sneakers, hard bodies bursting through muscle shirts and balloon-shaped physiques wedged into wrestling tees. Occasionally, an attractive woman tottered by on high heels, holding the hand of a boyfriend rushing to keep up with his wrestling buddies. The parade of fans didnt stop.

Janela pulled out his ponytail and shook his long brown hair from side to side. When the Most Badass Professional Wrestler in the World finally went back into the building, he passed the other wrestlers in the halls: Cody, the Young Bucks and Kenny Omega the biggest stars on the North American indie scene Kota Ibushi and Kazuchika Okada from Japan, Rey Fenix, Penta El Zero and Bandido from Mexico. Outside of World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE), these were some of the most important names in the business. And Janela, the five-foot-eight scrapper from South Jersey, who still lived at home with his mother, was among them. In fact, some of the fans had specifically come to suburban Chicago becauseJoey Janela who earned social media infamy by being tossed from a roof into the flaming bed of a pickup truck was included in this historic September 2018 show, known as All In.

Fifteen minutes later, Janela headed back outside for another smoke. The crowd had not abated. In fact, it had gotten larger. Wow, he said, the jitters again tingling through his body. This is big.

In fact, it was the largest show not staged by WWE or WCW WWEs chief rival until 2001 in 25 years.

Theres something happening here that hasnt happened in a long time, said Awesome Kong, the charismatic Amazon who later signed with All Elite Wrestling (AEW), the company that grew out of All In. Its kinetic. Theres an energy. Theres a sheer will of wanting something different to succeed. And this all started on a dare.

I first subscribed to Dave Meltzers Wrestling Observernewsletter in the 1980s, after I began writing for WWF Magazine, before the lawsuit with the World Wildlife Fund that forced the World Wrestling Federation to become WWE. Although the Wrestling Observerhas a significant online presence, I still look forward to the paper edition each week, an exhaustive collection of wrestling history, match results, business analysis and gossip in single-spaced seven-point type. Meltzer, who has lectured at Stanford Universitys Graduate School of Business, also popularized a star rating system for major matches, one that even the performers who claim to hate him take extremely seriously. While I was working on this book, Meltzer and I were guests on a public access show in which he was asked about his taste in movies and bands. He paused and fumbled for words. A movie?But when it comes to professional wrestling, not to mention MMA and old-school roller derby, nobody knows more or ever will.

In May 2017, Meltzer was asked on Twitter about whether Ring of Honor, the primary American indie league at that time, could draw more than 10,000 fans. Not any time soon, he responded. Cody Rhodes the youngest son of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes and an indie prince since he parted ways with WWE the year before then tweeted, Ill take that bet, Dave.

For the next 16 months, Cody and the Young Bucks, brothers Nick and Matt Jackson, worked to prove that Dave Meltzer was wrong, as well as to create