The Story Of Pacific Pro Wrestling: Part 2

By Chris Dalgleish

We started off with an eight-man tournament spread across three shows to crown the first Pacific Heavyweight Champion. The rationale behind the title naming was that these would appear as regional achievements, rather than company specific. Inspiration for this came from the Wrestle Rampage promotion in Adelaide. Participants were; Mitch McCarthy. Mitch was from Ipswich where we were based and after seeing his career grow from near the start we were very familiar with his talent. He also main evented the Prowl show I promoted against Mark Davis (who would go on to be part of Aussie Open) and the next entrant, Robbie Eagles. Davis and Mitch had got us in contact with Robbie for that Prowl show and we’d also seen him wrestle in his home promotion PWA in Sydney. He was incredible then and it came as no surprise that he’d go on to see great success in New Japan Pro Wrestling. We then had the Brisbane-based AJ Istria who we’d been familiar with since his first few matches in PWAQ. I’ve long believed Istria to be the best-kept secret in Australian wrestling and still find it puzzling that he hasn’t done more. Though tours of Zero1, Wrestling New Classic and Pro Wrestling Noah aren’t exactly nothing. There is a reason Istria won the Heavyweight title three times and our premier tournament (not this one) three times. The fourth man in the tournament was Ben Coles. Best known to the Australian public as Iron Jay. Coles played the Iron Jay wrestler character in nationally television commercials for I&J, a fish brand. You could say he was a white meat babyface.

The second part of the tournament actually took place on the second show (two brackets of 4) but I’ll go into it here. Mason Childs (who was fresh out of retirement and reinvented himself as the Australian Wolverine/Wolf). As the face of PWAQ Mason was synonymous with the previous successful era of wrestling in Queensland. At this time he had just started the Grindhouse Wrestling project and while we were operating our own things separately we were also working together for each other. He wrestled for us and I refereed for him. The experience I gained from working with Mason in this way was invaluable. Then there was the giant Kyote, another big name through the successful era of PWAQ and another who taught me quite a lot. Ryan Eagles who was a big name nationally and was behind the PWA promotion in Sydney. I had seen Ryan during the early PWAQ days and he had a 30 minute iron man match with Mason Childs that I consider one of the best matches I’ve seen. Finally we have Alex Shepard. At the time he was a rookie that trained under Mason, another hometown hero and someone that we had big plans for. It’s not enough to book the best current talent, you’ve got to be going somewhere as well. He now goes by Shep Alexander and is in the New Japan Pro Wrestling system, training under Bad Luck Fale in New Zealand. In order to establish some character and story, we had Alex beat Mason by disqualification (in what from memory was our first of only two non-clean finishes) after a low blow and the subsequent beat-down meant we could have Mark Davis come in as a surprise entrant to compete in the tournament.

Back to the first show, there was quite a good crop of smaller wrestlers who had come through in Queensland and we wanted to find a place for them. So we brought in a light heavyweight division (fun fact; our belts were all a universal design with varying strap colours and that design was based on the WWF Light Heavyweight title). We had established that the Melbourne-based Joel Bateman (now known for his deathmatches both abroad and at home where he has the Deathmatch Down Under promotion) was one of the premier light heavyweight wrestlers and while he was unable to make the first show, he was first in line for the inaugural champion. This was a rare four-way (we much preferred to book traditional two-sided contests) between Mystery (Tim Kade – he would go on to be the top of almost every promotion he worked, also went to Japan for Michinoku Pro and Singapore Pro Wrestling in, well Singapore), Lucas Gold (later JL Gold) who was a fresh rookie that we worked with throughout, Jake Nova who much like Tim was the top of almost every promotion he worked in Queensland and Criss Creed. Another rookie like Alex Shepard that we had great plans for. Criss would win the match, wrestle a great match with Joel and then retired. Alex also stepped away from wrestling to pursue another path only a few months into Pacific Pro. With the long-term plans we had for both of them – this was quite a spanner in the works. A key lesson to learn about the unpredictability of the whole thing.

We then move to a match representing one of the major things we wanted to present right. Women’s wrestling. I’ve long been a proponent of good women’s wrestling and at this time it was still yet to be taken seriously by the mainstream. One of the best young talents in Queensland at the time was a girl by the name of Toni Storm (though she was just Storm back then). The problem was that aside from Toni, there were no other women wrestling regularly in Queensland at that time. This made presenting serious women’s wrestling with coherent booking an expensive proposition. But this was something we wanted to invest in. I had seen the NSW-based Mighty Mel the year before and had in mind that her and Toni would make a good team. The original opponents that we lined up both pulled out so I contacted Ryan Eagles. PWA had a spinoff women’s promotion PWWA so it made sense. He suggested his (at the time) wife Madison Eagles and Shazza McKenzie. Madison was two years removed from winning the PWI Female 50 award for her work in the US and Japan and at the time the longest reigning Shimmer champion. Shazza was another top tier talent who had just recently started working in the US and has been on top in Australia for the last decade as well as a well-travelled veteran and former Heart of Shimmer champion. My intention was to build up to this level over time. They say “Rome wasn’t built in a day” but our women’s division kinda was!

So we ran Toni Storm and Mighty Mel against Madison Eagles and Shazza McKenzie on the first show in the semi-main event and gave them appropriate time. This led to Madison and Toni on the second for the vacant belt. Madison won in what was the biggest match of Toni’s career to this point. We later brought in Kellie Skater (who would go on to become Shimmer singles and tag champion with Tomoka Nakagawa, and an Artist of Stardom champion with Hiroyo Matsumoto and Evie/Dakota Kai), Kellyanne (another world-travelled wrestler), Vixsin (a world-travelled deathmatch wrestler) and as more local talent like Sara Jay, Riebell and Catherine Minx became available we were able to start giving them chances too. While I think we had a lot of great stuff on the men’s side – being able to present and sustain quality women’s wrestling is something I see as one of our biggest achievements.

I’ve mentioned Toni Storm and obviously we had great plans to build a division around her, but curiously she never actually won the Pacific Women’s title. Four months after we booked them together, Toni and Mighty Mel did a small tour of Japan where they wrestled as a team for Reina and worked with young (at the time) talents Syuri, Hikaru Shida and Risa Sera. Before we could get the belt to her Toni decided to move to England where she got to work across Europe, build her skills and name and go on to win the top title and both major tournaments in Stardom in Japan (which has been the premier women’s promotion in the world for a few years now). She worked for NXT UK and WWE where she was NXT UK Women’s champion and as of writing is a record-equalling 3 time AEW Women’s champion. I don’t think she’s too upset about never winning the Pacific title.

As we went on other promotions started (or restarted). Mason’s Grindhouse started a few months before we did and set itself apart with a lucharesu approach inspired by Japanese promotions like Okinawa Pro Wrestling, Style-E and Michinoku Pro. Australian Wrestling Alliance was one that ran a few shows and then went dormant. It became Grindhouse but was also it’s own entity. They were an NWA member for a time too. Prowl had restarted and this was another arrangement where we would work together. United Pro Wrestling and Queensland Championship Wrestling on the Sunshine Coast also sprung up. We were friendly with everyone which made for a pleasant environment and gave the guys plenty of places to wrestle. One of the side effects of this was that a lot of the shows had the same wrestlers. Because of this we remained somewhat selective in who we booked locally and there were some great talents that we never worked with.

The interstate wrestlers were a point of difference between promotions and bringing them in allowed us to keep things fresh and present that high quality wrestling that we were basing our existence on. Robbie Eagles was a regular for us as was Joel Bateman. We ran a story where Joel was mentoring locals Renegade and Lynx Lewis Jr but treating them poorly, even though it became clear that at one point he was remaining Light Heavyweight champion because of them. Eventually the payoff would come and Lynx beat Joel for the belt. Through the partnership with Grindhouse/AWA we got Hartley Jackson (world-travelled, former WWE trainer) and Jonah Rock (New Japan Pro Wrestling, Pro Wrestling Noah and WWE as Bronson Reed) who both held gold. Jonah did a tour of Japan for Noah as a triple crown champion, holding our Pacific Heavyweight title, AWA’s Heavyweight title and Wrestle Rampage’s Australian National title.

In 2013 we got the opportunity to book Rionne McAvoy, an Australian who lived in Japan and was trained by former WWE and ECW wrestler Yoshihiro Tajiri. Rionne was working for Tajiri’s Wrestling New Classic promotion at the time (which a lot of talent would later go to Keiji Mutoh’s new Wrestle-1 promotion). After he wrestled with us Rionne went back to Japan and in April, AJ Istria headed over there for WNC as Pacific Heavyweight champion. Istria lost the belt to Rionne in Korakuen Hall before winning it back in Shinjuku Face to bring it home. While my involvement stretched to okaying Istria taking the belt and filming a promo with him (Istria, Rionne and Tajiri are the ones that made this happen) – I still think this is one of the coolest things I was involved with. Both of these buildings are in Tokyo and while Korakuen has a much richer history than this, I always smile a little when I’ve walked past or watched anything from Shinjuku Face thinking of this story.

In writing this article I have looked back quite fondly on my Pacific Pro days. But it wasn’t all as fun as I’ve made it out to be. One of the things that kept the thing rolling was the sheer amount of work required. While we had some good help in a lot of areas, there were other areas too. The organisation, the promotion (a surprisingly overlooked part of promoting) and the show days. One thing I tried to do was take care of the airport transport for the fly-ins, unless they had other preferences. I’m always surprised when I hear stories of this not being done. They were our guests and it seemed like the right thing to do. Looking back I think it added a lot of stress to show days but it definitely helped my time management skills. Living nowhere near where talent would generally stay meant a lot of early mornings the day after a show to get them to the airport (again, nowhere near me). And the show days always meant late nights with the pack up and post-show deconstruction over a few beers. I think I’ve done enough two-man ring crew to last a lifetime.

When it’s for something you love, the above is just something you do. I loved my time in wrestling but it had to come to an end. The reason it ended was quite simply that we weren’t making money. We had expected to lose money for a while but after four years, it just didn’t make any sense to keep going. So we stopped. There was no big farewell or anything (though a farewell show probably would have made money) we just quietly and figuratively shut the doors.

I’ve thought about it a lot over the years and I think we did quite well when it came to the actual product. The problem was ironically, promoting. In retrospect I should not have been the one handling it. I wasn’t good at it. I think I was a good booker and a good showrunner, but I was not a good promoter in the literal sense.

Upon further reflection another thing that comes to mind is the talent relationship. While I believe we had a good relationship with a lot of the talent, I don’t think it was as strong as is could have been. I made a point of putting up walls within myself with the intention of keeping things professional. This may have limited the “buy-in” from talent on our overall vision and while I believe we were getting everyone’s best bell-to-bell, I could have allowed a lot more involvement from people in a few other areas which probably would have benefited everyone. This isn’t a criticism of anyone other than myself.

Both Mark and myself have moved on with our lives and I think the business here is in good hands now. Last year (2023) I dropped in to the venue where Pro Wrestling League were preparing for a show to see some old friends as I had something on in that area and had a bit of a “we’re not in Queensland anymore Toto” moment. Things have moved on and others are achieving what we couldn’t. It’s great to see!

To take a look at what Pacific Pro was all about, check out the Youtube chanel. To see one of my more recent projects alongside Greg Prowse and listen to our short-lived podcast together as well as reading a lot of our (mostly his) writing, check out thewrestlingroadshow.com

And for more great Australian wrestling content, keep coming back to PWdownunder!