Reviving my involvement.....

Although my 2004 move to the United States brought me closer to the pro wrestling scene, the lack of abundance of indy groups in north-east Ohio and north-west Indiana - where I was originally located - meant that once again I had little opportunity to be an active participant.

At the end of 2012 however, I moved south to Kentucky. Most of 2013 was spent establishing a new life (including a regular income), but in 2014, a July visit to Ashland to see my old friend Bobby Blaze started the ball rolling again.

He took me to two shows that he was involved in over the July 4 holiday weekend, and we talked. I returned to Ashland in October and we went to another show and talked some more.

The October show saw me help out as time-keeper. While yes, it is a job that is a vital part of the show, I'm reluctant to say that I "worked" the show, given this role. Although as I said to Bobby after the show was over "If you'd told me back in the 1980s and 1990s that one day I would be 'working' on shows in the United States alongside big names such as Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson, Jimmy Valiant and Tracy Smothers, I probably wouldn't have believed you."

I'm not where I want to be with it all yet, but I've certainly covered a lot of ground since those teenage years spent watching "On The Mat" on television back in New Zealand. And I've had some great adventures, and met a lot of fantastic people along the way.

(Pictured above: Tracy Smothers, Bobby Blaze, Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson used the occasion of their reappearance together on the Oct. 11 card in Wayne, WV to recreate a special group photo taken some years previously, when all four worked for Smoky Mountain Wrestling. They were kind enough to autograph a copy of the original for me, and let me take the "present day" photo).

Frank the promoter

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.

My first experience of Japanese wrestling

Toward the end of 1990, I finally took the plunge and headed to Japan. I quit my job (I was "in need of a change" anyway) and went to Japan for a little under three months, hoping to "get lucky".

As it turned out, fate was smiling on my efforts. I managed to make contact with Wally Yamaguchi - one of the few Japanese wrestling journalists who spoke good English - and he took me under his wing. I was able to see something of almost all of the promotional groups during my stay, along with the various merchandise shops, and of course, "Gong" magazine, where Wally worked.

Wally himself was booked to referee for a November tour by Mexico's Universal Wrestling Association, operating in Japan as Universal Wrestling Federation, and he got me a spot as the junior referee on the tour. This was my first taste of the lucha libre style. The tour also two of the girls from All Japan Women's Pro Wrestling - Mika Takahashi and Kaoru Maeda, and two Mexican girls, Esther Moreno and Xochi Hamada. (Moreno had been wrestling for All Japan Women's for some time prior to the tour). I was already a big fan of AJW, so the chance to tour with some of their girls, and road agent Rossy Ogawa, was also a huge plus for me.

The photos above are a group shot of our tour party in Northern Japan - I am kind of in the middle of the shot, just above AJW's Mika Takahashi (the girl with pig-tails) - and Yoshihiro Asia (who American fans may know better as Ultimo Dragon) putting a sleeper hold on me at one of our post-card parties.

Even before the Universal tour, Wally had noticed that everywhere I went I was taking notes. He encouraged me to put my writing to use, and it was this push that led to me staring up my own newsletter ("International Wrestling News") when I returned to New Zealand. Wally also encouraged me to start promoting in my own rite, and it was from here that my involvement with wrestling really went full on.......

My first steps "in the business"

With pro wrestling no longer on television in New Zealand, I had to look for other ways to maintain my interest.

As luck would have it, during the mid 1980s a group of locals who had wrestled mainly on Steve Rickard's undercards formed their own promotional group - the Australasian Wrestling and Martial Arts Association - in the Wellington area where I was living, with the aim of running their own shows. I was able to join this group, starting out writing press releases, helping putting the ring up, and any other odd job that needed to be done.

The "head wrestler" with this group was Bruno Becker (pictured above with the New Zealand Heavyweight Title - photo taken by myself for AWMAA publicity purposes), who had wrestled extensively around the world, and through him I was able to start learning more about the international scene. I also began subscribing to various international fan club publications - Dave Meltzer's "Wrestling Observer" newsletter being the most prominent.

It was during this era that I also met, and struck up a friendship with New Zealand wrestling historian Dave Cameron. I spent several weekends at his home, sleeping in the wrestling room under his house, and reading up as much as I could about wrestling around the world. (The picture above of Dave and I in his wrestling room is from a slightly later period, but it gives you a small snapshot of how jam-packed his room is with all sorts of wrestling goodies!)

Eventually an opportunity to referee for AWMAA opened up - I was now able to get "in the ring"! Like most small independent groups around the world, AWMAA had to battle to get its shows on the road. The economy in New Zealand was not good at the time, and interest (and therefore sponsorship backing) was low. We did what we good, but I wanted more. Between the two Daves (Cameron and Meltzer), and also through purchasing video tapes, I had begun to take a huge interest in Japanese wrestling, and decided I wanted to learn more about this. Why was Japanese wrestling so successful? Could New Zealand learn anything from their success?

Time to pack my bags and head overseas....

In the beginning......

My interest in wrestling in general, and pro wrestling in particular, was initially aroused in the mid-1970s, when I was still in high school.

New Zealand promoter Steve Rickard ran a weekly program on television - "On The Mat". At the time I first tuned into this show, the "big names" were Americans King Curtis and Mark Lewin, Scotsman Robert Bruce and New Zealand's John Da Silva.

On leaving school and entering the workforce, I began attending the monthly live shows at the Wanganui Opera House. Curtis and Lewin had left the country by this time, but Rick Martel, Peter Maivia, Rocky Johnson, Les Thornton and J.J. Dillon were just some of the big names from the international scene who came through town. I also saw my first live women's match between Joyce Grable and Le Lani Kai in either 1978 or 1979 - this was possibly Kai's first ever overseas tour, on the way to a stellar international career.

In 1981 I move to the Wellington area and was able to start attending the weekly shows there, which were held either at the Winter Show Buildings or the Wellington Town Hall. The latter venue provided two memorable events......

Firstly, a visit to his home country saw New Zealand's only ever World Champion, Pat O'Connor, participate in a series of matches against young "rising star" Al Perez. Pat had retired from active duty in the ring by this stage, but he and Perez still put on a memorable scientific match, which ended in a time-limit draw.

And secondly, I was in the crowd for the March 1984 NWA World Title change that "didn't take place", when Harley Race defeated Ric Flair. (The picture above was taken at this event by New Zealand Wrestling Historian Dave Cameron - more on Dave in later posts!).

Steve Rickard stopped promoting on a regular basis shortly after this, although he did run a brief tour in either 1986 or 1987. At about this time however, I was already taking my interest beyond just fan level.