It is also not uncommon for veteran wrestlers who have had past tenures with major promotions to appear on independent shows, either as special attractions or as a way to prolong their careers.
[2] This is considered by some to be a forerunner to indies since some stars of the past got their start in these low quality local rivals to the big regional territories.
Independent promotions are usually local in focus and, lacking national TV contracts, are much more dependent on revenue from house show attendance.
Some independent promotions are attached to professional wrestling schools, serving as a venue for students to gain experience in front of an audience.
Lucha libre has many more independent wrestlers in proportion to the rest of North America, because of the weight classes prevalent in the Mexican league system as well as its emphasis on multiple person tag matches; just about anyone with ability can emerge from an independent promotion into either AAA or Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre and be a champion there.
Independent Mexican wrestlers may use a lot of gimmicks, including some that may be based on copyrighted characters from American television shows, such as Thundercats and X-Men.
Because of Japanese societal mores which implied that a wrestler was a lifelong employee of a company and thus identified with it wherever he went, neither AJPW nor NJPW made an effort to acquire wrestlers trained in other promotions; wrestlers from the major promotions who left, such as Genichiro Tenryu, Gran Hamada, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Akira Maeda, Atsushi Onita, and Nobuhiko Takada had to start their own independent promotions in order to keep themselves in the limelight (Wrestling Association "R", Universal Lucha Libre, Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi, Fighting Network Rings, Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, and Hustle respectively) .
Although AJPW, NJPW, and Noah remain committed to their dojos, the reliance on independents is growing as obscure talent is recognized for its ability.
An alliance with promoter and former top star Jackie Pallo failed to prevent Joint gaining a five-year extension on its TV wrestling monopoly from January 1982 to December 1986.
By the end of this period, All Star had effectively replaced Joint (by now owned by Max Crabtree, brother of Shirley) as the dominant promotion in the UK.
Its principal competitors since that time have been Scott Conway's TWA, John Freemantle's Premier Promotions, RBW and LDN Wrestling.