Earlier this year, popular independent pro wrestler, Effy, took to social media to release a brief video laying out some of his issues with former Evolve promoter, Gabe Sapolsky. The two had worked together early in Effy’s career and had not seen eye-to-eye by the end of their experience with one another. For that reason, the Big Gay Brunch promoter took issue when he found out that Sapolsky had been using him as an example in his seminars as a wrestler to learn from in regard to proper marketing.
In a nearly hour-long conversation with Haus of Wrestling, now available on the Haus of Wrestling podcast feed, I asked the GCW star if he had heard from Sapolsky in the wake of that video going viral.
“No, and I want to explain the situation a little further,” he began. “Here’s what I’m gonna say because I want to point to specific instances because I knew this needed to be two minutes for Twitter. Number one, if you count the ticket sales for Evolve and compare it to the amount of gross profit made off of their seminar system, the seminars made more money than the ticket sales ever did.
“If you look at the system they had with NXT, NXT talents were being paid their salary and required to go to EVOLVE shows. Gabe was not paying these talents extra money out of his pocket. I would love to be corrected on that but that’s what I’ve heard from the NXT talents themselves, and the EVOLVE talents were forced to conduct these seminars as a part of their contracted deal where they were making 125 bucks to be the big stars and be looked at.
“It’s embarrassing the system he’s created but on a personal note, I go back to the situation with Izzy, first and foremost. I had a match with Izzy and some people disagree with it, and that’s fine but what Gabe did was make up things about people complaining or people sending in letters to try to refuse us the right of this venue, which was owned at that time by the FIP system, and by him and Sal, making things up to make this match go away when this wasn’t an instance at all.
“So, to sort of see like, not only has he not paid people, not only has he kept people with a carrot in front of their face for two, sometimes longer years, without offering them opportunities, and to see if you succeed, and what the pay would be, what the treatment would be, what his backstage treatment was like, and now he is returned to WWE. I’d like to be clear, there’s a reason they’re sending him out to indie shows. They don’t want him there. Nobody wants him around.
“This is a person who has made a lot of money in professional wrestling. This is a person who has set back the way we paid people for a long time. I’m surprised I can pull the money I can pull now because I thought, ‘Oh man, how do you make this work when you’re making 125 bucks and selling merch?’ Well, it turns out, that’s not the only system there. I don’t think he has the power he has anymore. I saw him sniveling around The Collective shows, and I don’t have control over the other Collective shows.”
If you use any quotes from this article please give a h/t to Haus of Wrestling for the transcription and link back