Chris Hero on how there’s still this stigma surrounding indie wrestlers in WWE

While speaking on the ROHStrong Podcast, Chris Hero compared the differences of being an independent wrestler to going to WWE & how there’s still this stigma surrounding indie wrestlers in WWE:

“I’ve had tons of that, even in my recent stint in NXT, where they think there are certain ways that things should always be done. It is absolutely, you know, now, not as much, but it is still a knock on you to be an ‘indie guy.’ They see ‘indie’ as kind of a bad word, and I don’t know how many of them actually have a grasp of what the independent scene has done over the years. I think it’s just the way it is, and they know that their boss likes things this way, and we need to make sure that the new guys coming in do it this way. Because if they don’t, they’re gonna get chewed out. So it’s very much a reprogram, retrain, reteach, break bad habits kind of thing when these things don’t matter when you are a star, right?

“You’re not even really a wrestler. You will have opportunities to wrestle, but you are a superstar that is telling the stories that they want you to tell and occasionally doing wrestling moves. That’s kind of how it breaks down, and it can be very frustrating for people that have pro wrestling tied to the identity of who they are and who they want to be. Because unless you become a huge star, you will not have the time on television to wrestle wrestle. You’ll be in there for 4 minutes here, 10 minutes here, maybe 15 minutes on a pay-per-view, but it will be micromanaged. And until you gain a certain amount of equity, you have to do things their way. And if you don’t do things their way, you will not get to an opportunity to where you can build that equity up.”