#98 How has China's pro-wrestling scene changed (with Following the yuan)
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Hello everyone, I am with LJ, editor of the World of Chinese magazine, which commissions Middle Earth. Hi Aladdin. So LJ, what are the exclusive stories that you guys have worked on this issue 104? We focus on how urban Chinese residents are reconnecting with nature. So they are lacking nature now? Absolutely. They discovered that there is a serious lack of nature education among urban kids right now. It has a negative impact on them, but there is also a strong effort to change the situation.

In a related story, we explored how a well-designed zoo in Nanjing has attracted large group of followers and how it has inspired them to care more about nature and wildlife.

And so in this issue, what are the others' articles? Yeah, we also took a cruise ship down the Yangtze River, traced the history of game consoles in China, and uncovered why Hunan Cuisine in particular is taking China by storm right now. So dear listeners, if you want to know more and support the podcast, go to theworldofchinese.com and order your latest copy. It seems that we can only rely on ourselves. The earth has made the last return to China.

Hi everyone, today we are releasing a bonus episode about wrestling in China. This episode is in co-production with Following the Yuan, run by consultant Yang Yaling, who was actually on the episode 51 regarding PopMart. Yaling interviewed a few months ago Adrian Gomez, who founded MKV, Middle Kingdom Wrestling, in 2015, with the assistance of a Chinese grassroots wrestler known as The Slam.

During the interview, Yaling and Adrienne talked about how wrestling is slowly building up in China with local and international companies, the need to integrate Chinese elements into the show, and who are the audience. Hope you will enjoy this conversation as much as I did. Hi, and welcome to the show. Thank you so much for having me on, Yaling. Yes.

I cannot wait to learn more about wrestling. And we are following the Yuan. We're diving into each sector with a focus and with a person in mind so that we can learn more about the industry through a personal angle. So today, I would love to hear about how you started Middle Kingdom wrestling and how's wrestling doing in China. Because as we know, sports and fitness is so hot in China right now. Every year, we get a different

favorite sport for the mainstream participants. For example, in 2020, I think it was half marathon and skiing in 2021. It was glamping last year, it was probably climbing. So I'd love to know

whether where you do you think wrestling is going. But first of all, let's go back to the basics. Can you tell a bit about yourself to our audience, maybe about your upbringing? Where did you grow up? And how did you get into wrestling in the first place? Well, my name is Adrian Gomez, and I am the founder of Middle Kingdom Wrestling. And

I think for a lot of people, when they hear about Middle Kingdom Wrestling, one of the first things that stands out to them is the Middle Kingdom part. We are based in China. And one of the main things that I brought with me to China when I decided to move abroad was actually my wrestling fandom.

So like a lot of people who love, who are in the wrestling industry, I am a wrestling fan and I'm not ashamed to say that I am. I grew up watching it on TV and I was excited to see, you know, the, the WWF and the WCW stars. But I think, uh, as far as how we were able to, uh,

how this idea came about, I'm American and my father is in the military. And in the military, we moved around a lot. So I had an opportunities to move to Japan for about five years.

Germany. My dad was stationed in Korea. So this is a part of me that even after into my adulthood, I still had that lingering desire to want to move abroad. And it just so happened that I chose China shortly after school, shortly after I finished school, because I was a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain, No Reservations or The Layover. But

His show really put a spotlight on China for me. He did several episodes in China. And that's when I decided when I was around 22 years old, I'll think, you know what, I'm going to try China. What I found is that there were a lot of young people in China that were familiar with like the WWE of wrestling fans.

that they would always upload the latest episode of WWE Raw, SmackDown, WrestleMania. So in China, I was kind of in wrestling heaven watching it all the time in my first few years. And I started to research, why is there no local wrestling league? And that's kind of how it started. Sorry, can I ask a quick question? What year did you move to China?

In 2010. 2010. Wow. Okay. So I've been living in China for about 14 years. But it was about, it wasn't immediate. I had no idea I was going to do wrestling. I came to China to be an English teacher, which I think is probably the first, you know, and one of the easier accesses into China would be entering the ESL industry. Yeah. It was about five years after that.

where I decided, you know what, I've kind of settled down in China, I'm going to try something different. And I think maybe nothing else could be more different than opening a pro wrestling league. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I think it was still a really brave step to take because what I hear from my English teacher friends or like through...

Some mutual friends is that once they get into a certain lifestyle, because it's quite comfortable to live as an English teacher, it's really hard to get out of their comfort zone, right? In China to try something new. What if your visa doesn't work out for you anymore, then you have to leave. It was quite adventurous. So what was the wrestling scene like? Did you have any local competitors yet back then?

Well, the wrestling scene was very grassroots. And I would say it's still grassroots today, but certainly even more so then. What I was able to find was a number of people, and I say a number as in, you know, a handful of very passionate, dedicated Chinese wrestlers.

self-taught pro wrestlers in China that had the same dream that I did of expanding pro wrestling in China. To go back to the word grassroots, we're talking a very small budget, a lot of DIY, like a DIY wrestling ring, DIY production. And what I did was I was able to connect with these people. One of them, his name is The Slam. The Slam is a pro wrestler from Dongguan. He opened a first wrestling school in China.

He built his own wrestling ring. And I was able to find him through his videos on Youku. And I reached out to him and I said, hey, do you, you know, I'm thinking of doing pro wrestling myself. Do you have some tips? Do you have some kind of advice you could give me? Or maybe we could partner up. Can you tell me about some of the biggest Chinese wrestlers and how they grew up in China?

training from my side, because I watch a lot of brand campaigns, I noticed that because of the sports marketing trend, a lot of consumer brands are adopting. Yeah, this trend of having athletes to be the face of their brand, so that it can fit into the so called name melodies. And because they show a very healthy and positive side of the brand. And I think from the wrestling world, John way Lee,

is very popular. And I think Li Jingliang is popular among some brands, but I don't see a lot of campaigns about him yet. Can you maybe name some other names or tell us how they became popular? I think there's kind of two levels, right? Yeah. So WWE did make a formal expansion into China in 2016. They did a WWE open tryout and they recruited nine Chinese wrestlers.

face of those Chinese wrestlers, the ones that they try to, that they thought, you know, would be like their main brand ambassadors. One of them was named as Tian Bin. And she's on television regularly on like WWE SmackDown and WWE pay-per-views. They have a machine behind them, a large machine of, of, of,

worth billions of dollars, especially Xia Li. But within our organization and MKW and Middle Kingdom Wrestling, I would say our most popular wrestlers would be, if you type Chinese, like Zhongguo Shuaijiao Shou or something like that on Baidu, I think you will find some of our wrestlers quite easily, such as Chen Wenbin, such as Wang Tao, and wrestlers like Jun Jie.

who they actually have built an audience through their grassroots campaign, through the efforts of the position that we've put them on MKW videos and MKW matches. So those are kind of like our local domesticists

domestic ambassadors in China. And I think they've done very good in that position. Right. I see. Thanks for sharing. Do you have any thoughts on the popularity of Zhang Weili and Li Jinliang? I think what's interesting about these fighters is that, especially Zhang Weili, is that their story, I think, resonates a lot with people.

I'm familiar with the local MMA scene as well. It's such a feel-good story for someone to see, you know what?

I've invested so much of my time, my body, and sometimes it's actually quite sad the amount of self-investment that a lot of fighters must put into the independency. So when they see someone like Zhang Weili make it and make

make a living and be recognized for their talents. It's really, really not only boosts the local scene, but also brings in outside, outside

I remember that growing up, one of my favorite things to do is to actually read the basketball magazines. That was also maybe a decade or at least 15 years ago. And back then I didn't watch basketball myself, but I will just be really into the stories of how these players from Miami Heat and Lakers grew up and what they have to do mentally and physically to counter the challenges.

So yeah, that's interesting. So you've witnessed the development of the wrestling scene in China since 2010. How do you think...

Reception has changed. What was it like in 2010 versus now? The reception and the business opportunities. That's a great question because what's interesting about wrestling in 2010 is that I could genuinely say that people did not know what it was. Versus now, where we have come into some progress. Now, certainly it's not mainstream.

However, we have gone to the progress where at least when someone sees a maneuver or sees something associated with pro wrestling, they can at least say, oh, Jayshir WWE. Okay. You know what? That's positive. So when someone sees an MKW match, you know, we can hear people mumbling themselves. This is WWE or WWE style.

That is a huge progress versus people just absolutely not understanding or being familiar with the rules, the maneuvers associated with the performance, the fight. I would actually say that that is one successful part of WWE's official China expansion. At least people are familiar with the performance itself now. Does it come with any misconceptions?

Yeah, I would say that one of the main misconceptions about pro wrestling is that it's a performance, right? You know, that's not to say that it's not extremely athletic, that it doesn't require professional training, and that it's not extremely dangerous. So sometimes one of the misconceptions is that due to the performance aspect of pro wrestling, you will find people who maybe kind of disregard it and just say, oh, it's just fake or it's just a performance. That is...

Honestly, a challenge that I think will probably follow pro wrestling wherever our industry goes. There's always going to be that a challenge of people saying, well, I would rather watch UFC or one FC than WWE because those are real and WWE is fake.

And that is just a reality that I think it's going to require not just a brand perception, but it's also going to require people to accept that, you know what, some of the more interesting and fun parts of wrestling is actually what makes it more entertaining.

in my opinion, than MMA or Muay Thai. That will continue to be a challenge, I think, for wrestling, especially here in China. I think for a lot of the readers and audience who don't know, and for myself, what is the major difference between WWE and UFC and what you're doing? I would say what we're doing...

I'll start with ourselves. Given the fact that wrestling is a performance art, that gives it more room to be able to adapt to its setting. What is our setting? We're here in China. So much of China's cultural art is actually performance-based.

Whether, you know, it's like Beijing opera or like Shaolin style, like dances and things like that. That is something that we can actually incorporate into our show. That is something that we can incorporate at least small elements of it at the very least or at the very most.

Maybe completely mix it with those aspects of Chinese culture into our performance and introduce wrestlers with backgrounds such as Shaolin Temple style wrestlers or from Kung Fu backgrounds or other Chinese martial arts. Or even it doesn't necessarily have to be martial arts, just something that represents Chinese martial arts.

Chinese culture. I think that's something that MKW is doing better than the UFC or better than WWE as far as offering a

true domestic alternative for combat fans in China that want to see people who relate to them and also see their culture represented in the middle of a wrestling ring. I see. Who are the main target audience of these wrestling matches? Whether they are amateurs just getting to know about the whole thing or they are like diehard fans? I want to say that

Our audience, the audience that we've built are wrestling, diehard wrestling fans. They are diehard wrestling fans. And that's not to take away from the fact that we completely appreciate their support and their support of building a domestic Chinese pro wrestling scene. You know, in a way, a lot of our fans, a lot of our fans feel like they have a stake in the company as well.

They want to see Chinese wrestling boom. However, we understand and we recognize that we need to also capture the imagination, the interest, and ultimately, hopefully, their time and money into...

wanting to watch a Chinese pro wrestling product. Our main audience is about 18 to 34 year old males. That continues to be about 91% of our audience. Though we understand that we definitely must continue to work towards capturing the completely other important demographics, such as women in the same age, as well as children, hopefully.

And we say parents, we hope we could bring, we hope that parents could feel safe and comfortable to want to bring their kids to our show. So, you know, right now we are still in the process of trying to get people from all age demographics to watch our product. Because that's something that WWE has done very well in America. They've made their product feel good for everyone.

And that's something that we need to continue to work on, especially if we want to be accepted as a mainstream product in China. I see. I think maybe a good way to bring more women in is just to ask the guys to...

package deal like if you bring your date it can be somehow cheaper like one interesting anecdote of my recent UFC exposure is that a bumble match asked me if I want to go see this UFC competition I'm like yes because I didn't really hang out with him that much on our first date and I thought it would be it would be fun to watch something together okay so I

I think we talked about this maybe a month before the actual date, the set date, which is somewhere in mid-December. And I said, yes, I'll keep an eye on the tickets. But that never happened. So we never got a second date. I like to think that UFC actually ruined my opportunity with this guy.

Oh, my God. Yeah, that's what I can tell you. Maybe you're right. You know, maybe you're right. Yeah, I think that would be a good, that would be a fun thing to do. And that's when I asked you, why was it canceled? Of course, I'm more interested in the business side now. Can you tell us and the audience why it was canceled, maybe from the industry perspective? Oh, I mean, okay. I, of course, inquired.

with industry people when I heard it was canceled. There is no certain reason. At this point, there is no certain reason. It could have been red tape. Do keep in mind that we are still, still just got off of zero COVID, right? So there's still some things that might, especially on the performance side, on such a large event, this event was going to be big.

A UFC production is probably one of the biggest events you can import. So, I mean, I think China, since COVID...

I can't think of too many other kind of international exported entertainment productions that are quite as big as UFC. And maybe it could have been some of the lingering zero COVID red tape. And another thing it could be is, you know, it could have been an issue with, I have heard that it could have been an issue with the venue, that some things just simply were not passed on time and

And that UFC decided, you know what, we're just going to move our show to Las Vegas if you guys aren't getting your act together. Because UFC, they're a very professional company. And I think sometimes a lot of the things, especially when you are doing an event in China, can feel very last minute. And even though it can, even though it will happen, some people don't have the patience to be like, well, I'm not going to wait for the certain answer.

one week before the show. If you can't tell me exactly how this is going to happen more than a month ahead, then I'm not going to do it. Even though they probably would have been able to have a successful show, but I think they just probably had more questions. They had more questions than answers. I do think that was one of the reasons. Yeah, that was a shame. Maybe that could be the one for me, but now we... No, I don't think that's going to happen.

But yeah, I remember before COVID there were quite a few UFC events. I think it would be really popular for X-Fast to go in a group, which sounds fun, honestly. And now... That is actually just a segue into that. You did mention, we did talk about demographics and there is one that I did. There is one demographic that I did not mention as far as our audience.

And yes, it's a lot of expats that like to get drunk at our shows. So, you know, that is something that, you know, it's just a...

And I think this audience mixes well with our Chinese audience. Hopefully you have an opportunity to come to one of our shows and you can see a mix of young Chinese and a lot of expats that, yes, a good amount of them are, of course, like to enjoy watching a fight.

with a beer in their hand, but it's also a very lucrative market, right? Yeah, it sounds fun. Now we don't have the USD match anymore, but we have an upcoming MKW match. Can you tell us more about that? Absolutely. Our next match, our next event, will take place next week, January 27th. So January 27th in Shenzhen.

And this event, we're calling it Bash at the Bay 3. So MKW Bash at the Bay 3 in Shenzhen. So this is our third Bash at the Bay and our first Bash at the Bay since COVID-19. And with our return event to Shenzhen, what we hope to accomplish here is to celebrate the main aspects of the Bash of the Greater Bay Area while also making sure

Shenzhen, the international main destination for pro wrestling on that day in the world. Our event will take place with our partners at Ray-X, WrestleMap, and we're inviting a lot of international wrestlers for this event. From Singapore, from Japan, and from America. So we're really looking forward to our

really making this the premier pro wrestling experience in China later in the month. Would it be your first event after COVID? No, this is not our first event after COVID, but it is our first Shenzhen event after COVID. Before COVID, we were running in Shenzhen every year, pretty much since we started. So this is a big deal to us to be able to go back to Shenzhen for the first time since 2019.

And what we hope to accomplish here is not only provide an incredibly entertaining and different experience to our fans, but also spotlight, like I said, the Greater Bay Area, the Belt and Road, and also be able to really showcase what pro wrestling and the potential of a domestic,

pro wrestling organization can bring towards not only the greater bay area but also towards the country i see i see can you for some of us who are not so familiar can you uh tell us how

this game would start and how long does it take, what are the rules because a few weeks ago I went to a Muay Thai game in Thailand I was surprised that the game was so short I feel like I could sit there for hours and watch people fight it only lasted 45 minutes

So can you give us what kind of expectation we should have if we were to go to your show? Well, our shows definitely last longer than 45 minutes. And, you know, depending on the fan, I mean, I'm glad that you are entertained by watching people fighting. So you could watch it for more than 45 minutes. Hopefully the majority of our public attendees are okay with a three-hour show.

We try to cram in about seven to eight matches usually, and there will be seven matches on this show. We're talking about a singles match, one-to-one or two-to-two. We also have four-versus-four. What we have are a variety of different matches that we try to appeal to different people with. We also have women's wrestling matches.

booked on the show, Hibiscus Me from Japan versus Alexis Lee from Singapore. I would say that we're going to try to cram in as much worthwhile entertainment as possible. So for our show, we start at 7. We probably will start, we'll end around 10 o'clock.

We got music. We've got loads of activities such as like raffle drawing. We have a meet and greet session for people who want to meet the stars. So we're trying to kind of turn it not just into a fight, but kind of like an intimate wrestling convention, like a convention, an expo kind of feeling.

Because there's just not a lot of wrestling in China, unfortunately. And we want to take advantage of this time where people can actually interact and kind of be a part of the experience more than just sitting and watching the show. Definitely. Yeah, I do hope that I can come to the show sometime in the future. Last question. Let's look at the big picture. What do you think it would take for China and the next-gen fans

to get into the sport? Would it be helpful if more parents are more receptive? Would it help if there's some kind of school program that kind of rewrite people's misconception about wrestling? What do you think it would take? I think all of that and more. So it's interesting that you mentioned like maybe introducing it to parents or maybe a school program.

I think wrestling, in order for wrestling to be truly mainstream in China, I believe that pro wrestling needs to focus on promoting the positive aspects of wrestling. So whether that be fitness or maybe diplomacy or sportsmanship, these kind of qualities, I think, are something that

should be kind of put at the forefront of when it comes to promoting wrestling. And then we can focus on the actual fight itself.

But I think wrestling culture actually has a lot of room to show that it is a positive lifestyle, whether you are involved or just a spectator or a fan. Another thing that I think will continue that wrestling desperately needs in China is money. So, yeah.

We need the financial resources to be able to present wrestling in a professional light. You know, we've been around for about eight years now since July of 2015. And one thing I, you know, I try to take every resource possible to make sure that our wrestling program looks as professional as possible, given our limited budget.

And, you know, I think a lot of people really admire our productions because they're small, but they're professional. And I think that wrestling in China needs a combination of more resources and to those resources put on promoting the positive aspect towards wrestling.

And that in that way, not only will we get support from parents, from elderly, from children, and of course, the main young demographic, but also where the government.

in China might feel compelled to cooperate with wrestling. Thank you so much. I think that's a great thought that we can end on. I really hope that your event goes well and I look forward to seeing the videos online.

And thank you for coming on to the show. Thank you so much for the opportunity to talk about MKW. And hopefully, you know, whether you are a combat sports fan or not, or whether you're a wrestling fan or not, I think the journey of pro wrestling in China should be something that should continue to be at least followed through different eyes.

I don't only want wrestling fans to focus on MKW. I kind of would like more, I would like a little bit of everybody to focus on our story. And I think that way they can appreciate what we've worked for and what we've sacrificed in the last eight years to build Middle Kingdom Wrestling. That's great. Thank you so much.

Looks like our listeners are still doing their dishes. We're really committed to their workout. For sure. Since we're still here, if you want to learn more about Chinese society, culture, and language, you should head to theworldofchinese.com and follow us on WeChat, TikTok, and Instagram, where you'll discover an impressive collection of award-winning in-depth stories and fun, informative videos, as well as amazing podcasts. Of course. Well, until the next issue then.