Shawn Dean is finally telling the truth about AEW tryouts
If you have been watching the indies lately, you have seen the same show. Ten guys wearing generic black trunks, hitting twenty superkicks apiece, and looking at the camera like they’re waiting for a casting director to slide them a contract under the rope. It is exhausting. Thankfully, Shawn Dean, the man currently managing the AEW enhancement talent coordination, finally went on record to tell these kids why their highlight reels are getting deleted before they finish the first minute.
Dean isn't playing nice. He is basically the guy at the end of the bar telling you that your pickup lines suck and you need to go home. The reality is that AEW—and honestly, every major promotion right now—has enough guys who can do a 450 splash. We have reached a point of diminishing returns on "spot monkeys" landing on their neck for a crowd of fifty people in a VFW hall. If you want to stop getting paid in hot dogs and handshakes, listening to Dean is the only way to avoid the unemployment line.
The move set is not your resume
The biggest mistake young wrestlers make is thinking that a flashy move is a personality. Newsflash: just because you can hit a Canadian Destroyer doesn't mean the booker cares about you. Dean’s advice suggests that the industry is looking for people who can actually read a room, hold an audience, and protect the talent they are in the ring with. You can throw all the spinning heel kicks you want, but if you don't understand how to transition into a hold or how to let a crowd breathe, you are just a human fidget spinner.
The critique here is simple but stinging. Most of these prospects are failing because they are wrestling for their friends in the back, not for the people paying to watch. If you go on social media, you see wrestlers posting clips of themselves hitting dangerous spots with literally zero context. It is vanity, not wrestling. Dean is essentially telling these guys to stop worrying about the star rating on their own internal scale and start worrying about if the promoter trusts them to open a show without killing somebody.
Why the 'indie buffet' approach is failing
We are currently living in an era where talent feels entitled to a roster spot because they did three tours of local bars. It creates a weird, toxic feedback loop where guys think they are "main eventers" before they even know how to properly throw a worked punch. The lack of basic fundamentals is glaring in standard matches. When you see a guy lose his footing on a simple Irish whip because he’s too busy thinking about his next dive, it screams amateur hour.
One major flaw in the modern developmental pipeline is that there is no more "finishing school" feel. Everything is trial by fire. You either sink, get injured, or get yelled at by a veteran who has seen better workers eat their lunch. Dean’s push for a more disciplined, polished aesthetic is the exact medicine this scene needs. If more guys took this advice, maybe we wouldn't have to watch three-minute TV segments where the wrestlers forget who the heel is supposed to be.
Ultimately, if you are reading this and thinking you can ignore the advice because you have a unique look or a high-gravity finisher, you’re the problem. The most successful guys on the roster are the ones who can do the boring stuff—the collar-and-elbow tie-ups, the clean transitions, the back-and-forth psychology—better than anyone else. Being "different" is the goal, but if you can't hit a crisp snap suplex first, stay home. Nobody needs another high-flyer with no depth, we have plenty of those already.
