Australian Wrestling thread

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I didn't realise that Super Dragon was meant to be at that show. I reckon it bombed financially. My wife and myself bought tickets on the day of the show for $15 each at the box office. I reckon the crowd maybe was 2,500 in a 9,000 seat arena.

This concept has been tried before. In the early 90s there were two tours called WrestleRiot. They were great fun. A combination of WWF guys between jobs (Junk Yard Dog, Don Muraco, Jake Roberts, Jim Neidhart, Road Warrior Hawk, Big Boss Man, Demolition Smash), indie/Japanese guys (Jushin Liger, Max Moon, Akira Nogami, Chris Benoit before he was infamous, the Fantastics, the Malenko brothers, Bobby Blaze) and Australian/NZ guys on the undercard (Con Iakoivdes, AJ Freely, Mark Mercedes).

The Melbourne shows ran at Festival Hall and drew around 4,000 for the first show and 3,000 for the second.
 

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Crows_United_FC said:
Rod Laver is just a better arena than Hisense! **** that's a good lineup at that International Assault tour, it's a pity that it didn't sell out! I always used to think that we had one of the best wrestling fan bases in the world! Obviously that isn't true judging by the attendances at local events. It's a shame! I wish Aussies were as passionate about wrestling like the UK is!
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What in your right mind could cause you to think that? Mexico, Canada, UK, Japan, USA all completely blow us out of the water, plus I'm sure there would be a lot of Asian and European countries that would be far better than us. Australia doesn't have a big wrestling fan base whatsoever.
 
NitroFan said:
the first international assault tour advertised mick foley and matt hardy (neither ended up appearing) and had jeff jarrett, aj styles, christopher daniels, rhyno and the dudley boyz and it didnt come remotely close to selling out hisense arena.

im pretty sure the show with hogan vs flair didnt sell out whatever building it was in, in melbourne at least.

how does 5000 people = rod laver arena, anyway? at best youd be going for hisense arena, and even that would be half curtained off
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and I don't think the second one (which had Danielson vs McGuinness) even sold out the Melb Sports & Aquatic Centre...
 
Unfortunately, apart from WWE, Australia has been a graveyard for wrestling for as long as I've been alive I think. WCW lost a huge amount in 2000, then the World Wrestling Allstars put on what might've been the worst show ever, then there was the very ill-fated International Assault 1 and the TNA cancellations.

The reason why the best Australian promotions can usually do is one guy like a Nakamura, Cabana or Hero is because it's the only way they can make it work - the large scale tours unfortunately haven't.

(to this day, IA remains one of my best ever non-purchases. I was happy as a pig in poop when that was announced... but it only took me a day to realise that I shouldn't book flights and hotels yet. I knew enough at the time to know that tour wasn't going to sell.)
 
timtamWB said:
What in your right mind could cause you to think that? Mexico, Canada, UK, Japan, USA all completely blow us out of the water, plus I'm sure there would be a lot of Asian and European countries that would be far better than us. Australia doesn't have a big wrestling fan base whatsoever.
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Because here in Australia, we are known to really follow something as big as WWE! I know it sounds cheesy but I always thought that was the case!
 
Crows_United_FC said:
Because here in Australia, we are known to really follow something as big as WWE! I know it sounds cheesy but I always thought that was the case!
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Dude your optimism is awesome, and I wish I had it. But it's misplaced in this scenario, we're just not a big wrestling country.
 
timtamWB said:
Dude your optimism is awesome, and I wish I had it. But it's misplaced in this scenario, we're just not a big wrestling country.
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Yeah now I realize that, years ago though I honestly thought that Australia had a fairly good wrestling viewership. I just looked at the crowd figure for Global Warning tour (Which was somewhere in the mid to late 50k) and thought that we had fairly solid support here.
 
nobbyiscool said:
Unfortunately, apart from WWE, Australia has been a graveyard for wrestling for as long as I've been alive I think. WCW lost a huge amount in 2000, then the World Wrestling Allstars put on what might've been the worst show ever, then there was the very ill-fated International Assault 1 and the TNA cancellations.

The reason why the best Australian promotions can usually do is one guy like a Nakamura, Cabana or Hero is because it's the only way they can make it work - the large scale tours unfortunately haven't.

(to this day, IA remains one of my best ever non-purchases. I was happy as a pig in poop when that was announced... but it only took me a day to realise that I shouldn't book flights and hotels yet. I knew enough at the time to know that tour wasn't going to sell.)
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The WCW tours were actually the most attended shows WCW had in 2000. They managed to lose money because of how incompetent management was at that time. The show I saw was pretty much sold out. The Death of WCW explains why the shows lost money - it wasn't because of attendance.

As noted the Global Warning tour had a massive crowd - even more impressive given it was half the roster. The only equivalent house show I can come up with a similar attendance was the Big Event in Toronto which was the entire WWF roster at the time plus the blow-off of the incredibly hot Hulk Hogan - Paul Orndorff feud.

The WrestleRiot cards drew. Even High Risk Championship Wrestling (what a debacle that was) drew a close to full house at Festival Hall. I used to regularly attend the NWA-Eppind cards here in Melbourne and even they could draw over 1,000 fans

I think there is support for some semi-regular tours of Australia. The problem is there are far too many small companies which come across as small time. Breaking the wrestling scene in to seemingly dozens of small promotions with no profile isn't going to build the business up. If there could be some cooperation, some TV coverage (even on cable access) and tours with well-known names, then it is possible that it could be viable to have some sort of regular wrestling tours in Australia.
 
It's a shame that Ring of Honor seems to have lost it's international ambition. I maintain that Australia has shown itself to be a graveyard if you just turn up and expect to be able to make money.

But I think that if you take the time to build something you could maintain a market. It surely would only benefit ROH for Sinclair to give away their TV show to a Fuel TV or even a FTA channel like One or 7Mate, and try and build up to a run of "boutique-sized" shows. It'd be a great market to use some Japanese talent in too if you wanted to try and run iPPV.

It's absolute pie in the sky and not even worth thinking about. It's interesting to dream though!
 

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Wrestle Rampage:
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Wrestle Rampage are back to the all ages shows in a few weeks from what I saw tonight on the facebook. Sunday arvo show on august 10 at St Claire with Slater and Jonah in the main event. I've seen a handful of their shows over the last couple of years and have been impressed at the quality. I didn't even know there was wrestling in Australia until then!
 
TroyBoz said:
Wrestle Rampage are back to the all ages shows in a few weeks from what I saw tonight on the facebook. Sunday arvo show on august 10 at St Claire with Slater and Jonah in the main event. I've seen a handful of their shows over the last couple of years and have been impressed at the quality. I didn't even know there was wrestling in Australia until then!
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Will be attending! Rock v Slater will be an awesome mainevent between 2 great talents.
 
Outback Championship Wrestling (OCW) was on channel 31 last night, saw it on the program guide and gave it a look, it was the first ever televised OCW show.

3 matches -
Tag team match, not bad, mostly highlights, cut up into match format
OCW Title match, pretty good match lots of heavy hits and red marks on skin afterwards
Harcore match... I was watching the start of this one and Krakerjack was the first bloke out, the next bloke I yelled out to my missus (not that she gives a *) 'Holy s**t that guy looks like Tommy Dreamer'. Turns out it was Tommy Dreamer, Not a bad match, lots of different weapons, ended with Krakerjack winning and then Dreamer putting him through a table.

I'm not sure if it's going to be on once a week, but if it is, I'll watch it again I reckon.
 
Mitho said:
Outback Championship Wrestling (OCW) was on channel 31 last night, saw it on the program guide and gave it a look, it was the first ever televised OCW show.

3 matches -
Tag team match, not bad, mostly highlights, cut up into match format
OCW Title match, pretty good match lots of heavy hits and red marks on skin afterwards
Harcore match... I was watching the start of this one and Krakerjack was the first bloke out, the next bloke I yelled out to my missus (not that she gives a ****) 'Holy s**t that guy looks like Tommy Dreamer'. Turns out it was Tommy Dreamer, Not a bad match, lots of different weapons, ended with Krakerjack winning and then Dreamer putting him through a table.

I'm not sure if it's going to be on once a week, but if it is, I'll watch it again I reckon.
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Let everyone know in the thread if that's back on or if anything else gets televised, would love to watch it.
 
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