Tommy Rich comes to Madison, West Virginia

Tommy Rich was the special feature guest on Gary Damron's Aug. 6 show in Madison, teaming with Ricky Morton and Shane Storm in a six-man tag team match.

Prior to the first match, Rich paid tribute to Roddy Piper, who had died a few days previously. After Rich's memorial, all wrestlers on the card came out to ringside for a 10-bell salute to Piper.

In the picture above, we have Lisa Cantrell (wife of promoter Ken Cantrell), Morton, Rich and Bobby Blaze meeting with fans near the merchandise tables.

UWA in Milton, West Virginia in August.

"I'll be back" with A.J. King against Joe Pace - in Milton, W.V. - Aug. 15!

19 Years Ago This Week........(Post 5 of 5)

Grand Final time at the Auckland YMCA....pitting Japan's Bison Kimura against Mexico's Esther Moreno in a rematch of the opening night's main event. Bison was undefeated in the preliminary rounds, and Esther's only loss was to Bison.

Once again Bison came out on top to win the trophy.

Overall, the tour was a great experience, and all the visiting wrestlers seemed to enjoy their time "down under". With the Japanese and Mexican wrestlers not due to fly out until Monday, we were able to spend all Sunday relaxing at the hot pools in Rotorua. Gong magazine did a two-page spread of that in their monthly "Ladies Gong" magazine, which had to have been great publicity for New Zealand tourism.

Dealing with the different languages was fun (in a good way) - none of the Japanese or Mexican women spoke English. Esther spoke Japanese, so that became the unofficial second language of the tour, with Esther then translating into Spanish for Blanca. But that was part of the experience, and with everyone working together, we had no real difficulties arising from that. In fact, I would list the different nationalities/backgrounds as one of the strengths of the touring party. On one of the nights we spent in Hamilton, Australia's Greg Smit (who had spent time in Japan at the Pancrasse dojo) and Bison put on a Japanese dojo-style meal for us, with food bought at the local New World. To see the way everyone in the touring party worked together to make the week an enjoyable one made life a lot easier for me.

I'm a big fan of the tournament concept that the major Japanese groups use on a regular basis. It guarantees different matchups in each town, and provides a hook for fans to follow the shows each night if they can. In Japan, the groups have fantastic media coverage to help them publicize each night's results, which other countries don't necessarily have. But in the internet age, this is certainly an area that social media can make a huge contribution. Web sites, blogs, Facebook, twitter etc. Build your foundation, and a proper strategy for keeping everything updated in a timely fashion, and if the local/national media come to the party, that's a bonus!

And if they don't you're not totally screwed.

Trying to manage shows in five towns, so far apart, was perhaps my biggest headache. Auckland and Wellington are 10 hours by car apart. But New Zealand's small and spread out population made sticking to a smaller area unrealistic. Whereas Tokyo and big American cities have millions of people in just the one city, New Zealand's total population of approx. 4 million is spread over the whole country. Five shows in just the Wellington area or lower North Island wouldn't have worked. Perhaps five shows could be done in the (far north) Auckland/Hamilton area, but that was the opposite end of the island to where I lived.

Plus, I was also trying to work in with the country's amateur clubs, which were just starting to try and build a women's program at the time. I was aiming for a tour that gave wrestling at all levels in New Zealand a boost.

By aiming for the bigger cities, I was also trying to aim for more media coverage, especially at national level. That didn't quite go as planned, but that's the nature of the beast. All you can ever do is give it your best shot!

19 Years Ago This Week.......(Post 4 of 5)

Action shots - two posts worth of the women in action round off our series.

The original tour plan was for shows in five North Island cities (Wellington, Masterton, New Plymouth, Hamilton and Auckland). With the main focus of the tour being our women's tournament featuring six contenders, each town would host a complete round of three matches, plus two men's bouts featuring a mix of matchups between New Zealanders Shane O'Rourke and A.J. Freely and Australians Mark Mercedes and Greg Smit. It was hoped that we would also have amateur wrestlers from the local clubs in each region participate on the undercard, and, in addition to the final round of tournament matches, the final night in Auckland would feature a Main Event matchup between the two top place-getters in the round-robin phase, to decide a champion.

Esther (Moreno) and Bison (Kimura) got things off to a flying start with a fantastic first-round tournament clash in Wellington, which was set as the Main Event that evening - they had both worked extensively for All Japan Women, and I figured they would provide our best match-up, and I was right.

Masterton threw a real spanner in the works though - in the form of bad weather. A nasty storm blew into town late that afternoon, arriving just in time, and staying just long enough, to mess things up for us. Although we got most of our wrestlers over the hill (from Wellington) before the road was closed - our two vans were two of the last vehicles allowed through - very few locals braved the elements and we ended up cancelling the show. That, of course, meant juggling the scheduled bouts in New Plymouth and Hamilton to enable us to arrive in Auckland with the planned final round in place.

In New Plymouth and Hamilton, we found ourselves without amateurs, but the women were happy to do an additional tag match in each of these two towns, so we were still able to provide a full show. In lucha style shows - certainly in Japan - the wrestlers often returned to the ring for a special main event after the main card, so for at least four of our women, this was no big deal, although as promoter, I was certainly grateful for their enthusiasm and willingness to help make the shows a success. In New Plymouth, this tag-team matchup saw us pit Candi Devine (USA) and Kimura and Kato (Japan) against Raewyn (NZ) and Esther and Blanca (Mexico).

But by now, the poor weather/cold temps were making their presence felt, and both Raeywn and Esther were coming down with flu. Raewyn ended up withdrawing from the tour after New Plymouth, although Esther continued with the tour, and Hamilton's tag match was a Japan Vs Mexico affair. Kato gave us a scare in that match, injuring her neck and having to be carried back to the dressing room. Fortunately, she was in much better shape the next morning, and able to still participate in the Auckland show. With Bison already in possession of four wins from four tournament matches, and Esther certain of a fourth in Auckland due to Raewyn's forfeiture, regardless of final round results, we knew this would be our Grand Final.

Story to be continued in the final post. Photos below - courtesy of Dave Cameron - are from the Auckland show with the non-finalists.....

1: Kato waits for her call to enter the ring. Kato wrestled under a mask in Japan, and with tour photos appearing in Gong magazine, and also video to air on the Samurai cable television station, she also wore it for her New Zealand matches.

2: Japan Vs Mexico, with Kato in a little trouble here against Princess Blanca. Kato and Blanca were both in the early stages of their respective careers, and I believe this was the first overseas tour for both of them. Blanca was scheduled to be spending some time in Japan after our tour, so hopefully, she found the New Zealand experience a useful preparation for Japan.

3: Candi Devine goes airborne off the ropes.

19 years ago this week......(Post 3 of 5)

In my last post I mentioned our visit to Dave Cameron's home, and his wrestling room.....

Mexico's Esther (Moreno) was surprised to find that Dave even had some old wrestling programs and magazines from her homeland. New Zealand hasn't seen a lot of lucha libre style wrestling, and prior to my first trip to Japan I had only heard about it. (And ironically, on that first tour, I refereed for Universal Wrestling Federation - the lucha company in Japan). But it's not surprising that Dave has goodies from that part of the world in his collection also.

Japan's Bison Kimura enjoyed Dave's collection of miniature wrestling figurines, and their ring.

Australia's Mark Mercedes found Bison, and I assume he also found some goodies from the Australian wrestling scene :-)

USA's Candi Devine took a liking to some of the books she saw. I believe the one she is holding in this photo is actually (New Zealand promoter) Steve Rickard's biography.

With show time beckoning, we finally had to get ready to go. We're still waiting for a couple of people in this photo, but, from top left and working down the steps we have Princess Blanca and Esther Moreno from Mexico, Naomi Kato from Japan, Mark Mercedes from Australia (with the dark glasses in the middle), Wally Yamaguchi from Japan, A.J. Freely from New Zealand, Greg Smit from Australia and Bison Kimura from Japan, and me on the phone, obviously conducting important tour business.

Tomorrow I'll have some action shots from the Auckland show, and maybe write a little more about the matches.......

19 years ago this week...... (Post 2 of 5)

As many of the photos in this series were taken by New Zealand pro wrestling historian (and legend) Dave Cameron, and also given the amount of support he and wife Shirley gave to me during my career in New Zealand, I really need to pay tribute to them early in the series.

No wrestling tour of New Zealand would be complete without a visit to Dave and Shirley's home, and time spent in his wrestling room - essentially a mini-museum full of all sorts of treasures from around the world of wrestling. So I made sure that when we came to Auckland, the crew would have a chance to visit. When Dave suggested we "come over early and we'll give you a bite to eat" we had no idea that he, Shirley and son Paul were preparing a HUGE feast for everyone, way beyond anything we could have imagined. We all spent a wonderful afternoon there, and would have liked to have been able to stay longer, if we didn't have a show on that evening.

Great hospitality - many thanks once again to Dave, Shirley and Paul.

Also for any young New Zealanders serious about coming overseas, I would recommend you spend time browsing through Dave's collection. When I first went to Japan, I was able to impress my hosts by actually being able to discuss the 1950's bouts between Japanese pro wrestling legend Rikidozan and NWA World Champion Lou Thesz, which I had read about in magazines in Dave's collection. Rikidozan is kind of like a "wrestling god" in Japan, but Wally couldn't believe someone from New Zealand knew about him - until I told him I read about him in Dave Cameron's wrestling room. Then he understood! (Wally had previously visited New Zealand for the Race Vs Flair World Title matches in 1984, and had visited Dave's room on that occasion, so he knew what a treasure it is.)

Photos accompanying this post are as follows:

1: Dave and Bison Kimura.

2: Dave with the two Mexican women (Esther and Blanca) and also Shirley and Paul with them.

3: Dave with Wally Yamaguchi, Bison and American Candi Devine, in Dave's living room. Wally and I must have been hamming it up a bit while I was taking these pcs, as Bison is telling me to shhhh!)

More pics from our visit to Dave's wrestling room tomorrow.......

19 years ago this week...... (Post 1 of 5)

The first week of July 1996 saw me undertake my largest effort as a promoter - the "1996 New Zealand Women's Grand Prix" tour.

Six women wrestlers (Bison Kimura and Naomi Kato from Japan, Esther Moreno and Princess Blanca from Mexico, Candi Devine from USA and Raewyn Hunter from New Zealand), along with (males) Greg Smit and Mark Mercedes from Australia and A.J.Freely and Shane O'Rourke from New Zealand undertook a five-center tour of New Zealand's North Island. The women's tournament (five rounds of round robin with a Grand Final on the final night featuring the top two place getters) - based on the annual Japan Women's Grand Prix tournaments thatAll Japan Women ran in Japan each year - was the main focus, with also men's matches and local amateurs on the undercard.

The towns visited were Wellington (July 1), Masterton (July 2), New Plymouth (July 3), Hamilton (July 5) and Auckland (July 6).

1: Some of the tour publicity Japan's "Gong" magazine gave us - thank you to Wally Yamaguchi, who also accompanied the tour, and also helped me out with referee duties in some towns.

2: Photo of me and Bison doing a promo clip relating to the tour for Japan's Samurai television (photo taken from Gong magazines tour coverage)

3 and 4: The five women who survived as far as the Auckland show (Raewyn took ill on the tour and missed the last two dates). From left to right, Kato, Bison, me (the ref), Esther, Candi and Blanca.

5: Bison with the tournament trophy after winning it in Auckland.

More photos to follow over the next few days....