Returning to New Zealand I immediately set about creating my own newsletter - "International Wrestling News" - and working on plans to make AWMAA promotions a little more regular and purposeful.
The first three issues of IWN were simple eight-page newsletters, but by April, the ball was starting to roll. Through my involvement with AWMAA I had also come to know Al Hobman, who himself had been one of New Zealand's more prominent wrestlers during his time, and had also promoted. Al set up a series of shows at the Wellington Workingmen's Club, and also at the (summertime) Kilbirnie Street Fair, and took me on as his "assistant promoter" for these shows to help me learn the ropes. (The photo above of me officiating is from the Kilbirnie Street Fair show, with Al's son Kurt standing just behind me, and Kurt's tag partner on this occasion, A.J. Freely with his face obscured by my outstretched arm).
I decided that my eight page newsletter should really become something a little bigger to help us publicize our local events, so I switched to a "booklet" format. Compared with magazines on sale in bookstores, it was a very "amateur production", with master pages put together with the aid of scissors and glue, and then photocopied and assembled into a magazine by hand. It was something more than a newsletter, but nowhere near commercial magazine quality, although I was looking at the commercial magazine as my long-term goal.
And I now began sending copies off to various promoters around the world.
This had an almost immediate payoff, when a Canadian gentleman (Terry Palmer) contacted me to let me know that Canadian woman wrestler Christina Dutkowski (who wrestled as Yukon Erica) was going to be visiting New Zealand for three months, and enquiring whether I knew of any shows she could appear on. Christina had wrestled with All Japan Women, and our AWMAA group had two girls so I figured that this was a great opportunity for us to give them, and women's wrestling in general, a push.
Through Wally Yamaguchi, I was also able to bring in Kiyo Honda (actually, Wally's wife who had previously wrestled for Japan Women's Pro Wrestling) from Japan, and although the two existing girls didn't want to take advantage of the opportunity, the show was able to bring in four new girls to our group.
Over the next few years we ran shows where we could, I continued to make regular (shorter) visits to Japan, and I continued to publish my "magazine" on a monthly basis. I tried to cover as much from around the world as I could, including a tour to Australia organized through the Malenko wrestling school. Australians Mark Mercedes and Greg Smit had spent several months there training, and had found a local promoter interested in backing a wrestling tour. I was able to help one of our young New Zealand boys get on the tour, and in the interest of "pushing" young emerging talent from all around the world, put the photo of a young wrestler from Kentucky - Bobby Blaze - who was on the tour on my cover. (I met Bobby in Sydney during this tour, and the two of us are also pictured above).
To this day, Bobby and I are still friends!
While my magazine was generating "interest" internationally, it wasn't doing well as far as sales were concerned. By mid-1993,I was starting to wonder if New Zealand really was the right place to promote. Wally offered me a chance to come to Japan for a longer stay and see if I could make anything happen there for myself and two of our young "potential stars" from New Zealand - A.J. Freely and a girl we thought maybe also had the potential to do well internationally - so I jumped at the chance.
I spent most of the next nine months in Japan, during which time, with Wally's help, I produced "Banzai Press" - an English-language newsletter devoted to the Japanese scene.
Unable to secure a way around immigration regulations that would allow me stay longer, I returned to New Zealand in 1994, wondering what to do next. We sent our girl wrestler to the United States for training, and this time I tried producing a weekly radio show. It didn't have quite the workload as a "magazine"/newsletter, and Wellington Access Radio provided airtime at an affordable rate. So I began my weekly broadcast there. It started out as 30-minutes per week, each Monday, but eventually expanded to 60-minutes per week. In all, the show ran for just over nine years - I stopped it in 2004 when I eventually moved to the United States.
In 1997 my biggest undertaking as a promoter took place, when I organized the "New Zealand Grand Prix" tour.
This was a five-show tour of the North Island of New Zealand, with six women (Bison Kimura and Naomi Kato from Japan, Esther Moreno and Princess Blanca from Mexico, Candy Divine from the United States, and our New Zealand girl) participating in a round-robin tournament modeled on the All Japan Women Pro Wrestling's summer "Japan Grand Prix" tournament. I also brought Mark Mercedes and Greg Smit in from Australia for men's matches against local boys, and included amateur matches on the undercard. (The photo I have attached is from the tour coverage presented in "Gong" magazine - in Japan - with myself and Kimura recording a promotional clip for airing on Samurai TV's weekly pro wrestling show.
Yes, it was a lot of hard work, but the experience was one I will never forget. We were not able to use it as a launching pad for more regular tours, but by actually "doing it", and including several non-English-speaking wrestlers, I learned a lot about structuring a tournament within a tour. I will be eternally grateful to the overseas wrestlers for their support throughout the tour. (And also, once again, Wally Yamaguchi, for his support before, during and after the tour).
While it no longer appeared possible to bring pro wrestling back to New Zealand, I continued to help the local amateurs for the next few years, in various capacities.
Once again my Japanese connections proved useful, as I was able to attend (and record match commentaries) of the 1998 Asian Women's (Olympic styles) championships in Tokyo. Several of the girls from the Japanese team recorded brief promos for me to use on my radio show, in addition to my match commentaries. The Japan Women's Wrestling Federation was, at the time, at the forefront of efforts to push for a women's competition at the Olympic Games, and they were only too willing to provide me with anything that might help women/girls in New Zealand take up the sport. I was able to contribute to the book "Born in Athens, Born To Be In Athens" written by Prof. Saboru Sugiyama of the JWF. (The photo above is of Japan's 75kg World Champion Kyoko Hamaguchi - daughter of professional wrestler "Animal" Hamaguchi - receiving her Asian Championships gold medal and flowers, flanked by the silver and bronze medalists from Chinese-Taipei and South Korea).
I also attended the annual USGWA tournament in Michigan in 2002 - my "Monday" broadcast of my radio show that week was delivered via phone from my hotel room in Michigan, just hours after the USGWA tournament finished (Sunday night US-time), and I played the commentaries from several of the matches over the next few months on my show.
As the years past, I managed to assemble quite a list of people around the globe who would make themselves available to be interviewed on my show.
Yes, my show may have been broadcast on a small station in Wellington, New Zealand, but I was providing a truly international show - and I had regular emails from a listener in Alaska who picked up the show each week on his short wave radio!
At the beginning of 2004, I finally had my green card allowing me to move to the United States, and I wound up my radio show at the end of March.
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