‘Speedball’ Mike Bailey: I Wrestled For Five Years Until I Got Paid For The First Time

‘Speedball’ Mike Bailey talks the early years of his career.

Over the duration of 2022, ‘Speedball’ Mike Bailey has become one of the biggest names in the entire landscape of pro wrestling. Along with being a mainstay in IMPACT Wrestling, Bailey has honed his craft in independent promotions like GCW, Wrestling REVOLVER, PWG, etc.

Despite truly breaking out in 2022, Bailey has been in the wrestling business since 2006. In a new interview with Chris Van Vliet, Bailey revealed that he wasn’t paid once during the first five years of his career.

“The wrestling landscape is completely wild, it’s completely different now then when I started. For a lot of people, this is how their path went. They start training for wrestling in 2018, they get a match on AEW Dark after they’ve been wrestling for 6-8 months, and now they’re trying to get signed and get tryouts and stuff. I wrestled for five years until I received the first envelope that had five Canadian dollars in it for pay. Before that, not even a handshake and a hot dog. Five years of wrestling for free, yeah. It’s not because anyone was taking advantage of me, it’s just because no one was making money because this is pre social media where the only way to advertise your wrestling shows is by stapling flyers to telephone poles and waiting outside of WWE house shows to hand out flyers to the people there. You’re not bringing in anyone, there’s no draw, there’s no big names. No one’s making money.”

Earlier this year, Fightful had an exclusive interview with Mike Bailey. In the interview, Bailey discussed Naomi, signing with IMPACT, and Pewdiepie. To see the full interview, click here.

Bailey is set to take on Yuya Uemura on Thursday’s episode of IMPACT Wrestling. To see the full lineup for that show, click here.

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