The Collegiate Pipeline Panic
Pull up a stool, grab a cold lager, and let's talk about the collective meltdown happening on your timeline right now. The wrestling internet has found its latest hill to die on, and surprise, it is the exact same hill they have been crying on for three years. Every time WWE signs a college track star or an amateur wrestler, the indie purists act like Shawn Michaels personally came to their house and burned their old Ring of Honor DVDs.
The latest target of this gatekeeping is NXT standout Kendal Grey, who decided she had heard enough of the keyboard warriors as Ringside News reported. Fans on the forums are arguing that these collegiate athletes do not respect the business and did not grind in front of thirty people in a high school gym. But Grey is not letting that label stick to her name, firing back at the critics who think college athletes are just taking shortcuts.
Let's look at the skeptics' perspective first because they love to complain. The vocal purists on Reddit argue that signing athletes who never watched a minute of tape before their tryout results in soul-less, robotic matches. They point to green performers botching basic transition moves or looking completely lost when a spot goes off-script.
But the enthusiasts are chanting a completely different tune. They look at the athletic upside and see performers who can do things that would blow the minds of ninety percent of the indie scene. These are elite competitors who already know how to train, take coaching, and handle the grind of professional athletics.
These athletes are built differently. They come from programs where discipline is everything, and they treat the training facility like their office. That level of focus means they can pick up the mechanics of a bridging German suplex or a springboard moonsault in months rather than years.
The OnlyFans Double Standard
If you think the complaints about athletic recruits are exhausting, wait until you hear the discourse surrounding side hustles. Elayna Black recently sat down with the Sports Jedi Network to address the fans who refuse to take her seriously inside the ring because she has an OnlyFans page, which sparked a massive online debate. It is the classic wrestling fan behavior of using a performer's personal life to discredit their in-ring performance.
The contrarians in the comment sections claim that a wrestler cannot be a serious title contender if their primary engagement is behind a paywall. They write long paragraphs explaining how it ruins the suspension of disbelief and makes the product look cheap. Some even argue that it distracts from the training and the physical preparation required to put on high-quality matches.
Give me a break. Wrestlers have been doing pin-up calendars, fitness shoots, and reality television for decades without their athletic credentials being questioned. Now that the talent is cutting out the middleman and keeping the profit, the gatekeepers claim the sky is falling.
Let's be honest about what is actually happening here: a huge portion of the internet wrestling community wants to control these performers. They want to decide what is acceptable entertainment and what is not, based on outdated rules from the era of tape-trading. When a wrestler takes control of their own brand, the gatekeepers lose their minds because they cannot control the narrative anymore.
Rewriting the History Books
This is not a new fight, and Jasmin St Claire is here to remind everyone that she was fighting these same battles when today's NXT rookies were in diapers. St Claire recently spoke out about how certain women in the industry tried to use her adult film past to push her down, as Ringside News detailed. It is the same old playbook being run by a different generation of critics.
The historical skeptics loved to pretend that St Claire did not belong in a locker room, using her past as a weapon to discredit her appearances in ECW and on the independent circuit. They argued that her presence tarnished the division and kept serious wrestlers from getting opportunities. It was gatekeeping at its absolute worst, dressed up as concern for the business.
But the fans who actually watched the product know that St Claire brought real heat and personality to every segment she was in. She understood character work better than half the work-rate darlings who could do ten suplexes but could not cut a promo to save their lives. Her pushback is a reminder that the industry has always relied on diverse backgrounds to generate interest.
When you look at these three situations, the thread connecting them is incredibly clear. Whether it is Kendal Grey's collegiate background, Elayna Black's subscription page, or Jasmin St Claire's history, the complaints always come from the same place of insecurity. The critics want a very narrow version of what a professional wrestler is allowed to be.
The Verdict on the Gatekeepers
Let's be real here. The purists want us to believe that the only path to greatness is the traditional indie route, pointing to guys who spent a decade in the bingo halls as the gold standard of what wrestling should look like. And yes, that grind produces incredible storytellers, but it is not the only way to build a superstar.
The reality is that WWE's athletic recruitment program has already given us some of the biggest stars in the modern era. You cannot look at the success of collegiate athletes in development and tell me the system is broken. The enthusiasts are right that the athleticism is undeniable, and the training pipeline at the Performance Center is designed to teach them the storytelling aspect that they lack.
However, we have to keep it real and look at the negative side of this equation because the skeptics do have a point when they say the television product can suffer when green talent is pushed too quickly. We have seen matches on NXT Level Up where the lack of ring awareness led to an ugly botch on a simple sunset flip or a mistimed running cross-body. A collegiate background does not automatically give you the crowd connection that makes wrestling work.
But that is a training issue, not a reason to dismiss their entire career path, and the same goes for the complaints about OnlyFans and adult backgrounds. At the end of the day, if a performer can go in the ring and get a reaction from the crowd, their side hustle is completely irrelevant. The wrestling internet needs to put down the pitchforks and appreciate the talent for what they do between the ropes.
