Year 1
What good would it be to have the world’s tallest sky scraper on a weak foundation? I planned to build In The Biz from the ground up. There were no immediate television deals, sponsorships, or financial backing from a bored billionaire. The first year was rough, some months we lost money but every following month we came back. We never lost faith or questioned the process. I don’t believe in hot-shotting wrestlers, and the same applies for our company.
Our first show was a sold out crowd of 5,100 people, it was an intimate setting compared to the 65,000 seat arenas we are regularly selling out these days. The first ITB Heavyweight Champion was a local guy, Matt Robinson. He’s still around now, he rarely wrestles anymore. He’s one of the lead trainers down at the academy these days. Kenny and I agreed we wouldn’t just strap the title on him, instead he had a four-month title chase until he finally got the title (not that he needed it anyways). He held onto the title for the next 13 months defeating many challengers and putting on just as many amazing matches in one of our most memorable and longest title reigns.
As I mentioned before, it took a lot more convincing to get Okada to join forces with us. It was a risky enough move for Omega to take the chance with In The Biz, but it was even more risky for Okada. English wasn’t his first language; he had never lived in America or even anywhere in the Western hemisphere for any significant period of time. He was a Japense wrestler in the biggest Japenese wrestling promotion at it’s peak. I couldn’t exactly tell you why, but eventually he did decide to take that risk and would become not only the other vice-president for In The Biz Pro Wrestling, but also a very good friend. Okada has been just as important in the building of this foundation as Kenny. The three of us all agreed it would be easy to just go ahead and book Omega and Okada on their first show together, but we also agreed that just because it would have been easy and would have drawn a big crowd that keeping them apart for a while would ultimately lead up to so much more.
The three of us don’t agree on everything, we probably disagree on more than we actually agree on. One thing we all strongly agreed on was this promotion was for the wrestlers. I was once an artist, so I completely understood how it felt and how damaging to my craft it was for label heads to tell me what they wanted from me. The label would try to tell me “oh you need a single to play in the clubs”, but that wasn’t exactly my strong point and if I wasn’t in the mood to write and then record that hit club single, then it would sound forced and would more than likely flop. The same principle has always and will always apply here. As the founder and president of In The Biz, it’s never been my job to script a promo or to design a match. My job is to provide the platform for the artist to do their art. If a worker wanted to go out there and hop like a frog to the ring, who am I to say whether that will ever get over or not? Of course, if it doesn’t get over or seem promising, I wouldn’t offer them a contract after their trial but still it’s their craft and they should do what they feel is right.
Somewhere towards the end of year one we had begun to really build a buzz. It was around that time that we signed Chris Jericho to a part time contract. Even though Jericho was a little bit past his prime in the ring, he was invaluable behind the scenes, and could still put on stellar matches. Jericho worked with us for about two years until his retirement. His final match in professional wrestling was with us, and what a match that was. Still to this day, I talk to Chris pretty regularly even though he’s not officially working with us anymore. We wouldn’t be where we are today without his help, and I can’t thank him enough for that and his willingness to put the younger guys over and make them look like a million bucks. Around the time of Jericho signing and debuting with us, Kenny Omega did yet another monumental thing for In The Biz he helped us sign Kota Ibushi to a full time exclusive contract. By the end of year one we were selling out 10,000 to 15,000 seat venues. We had also built quite the roster. We had also signed Jay White, Chris Sabin, Walter, Christian (mainly for backstage but he did work a few shows for us) and a few more names. We had attracted the eyes of the wrestling community, as well as the eyes of future sponsorships. We now had to continue our momentum into year two and continue to grow. The regional television deal we were offered in January of year 2 was going to be very helpful with that.