History GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff / ProWrestling

* Many American wrestlers become far, far more popular overseas than they ever were in the US -- in some cases it's hard to say that this trope applies, because they often spend enough time in another country to be foreign stars rather than American stars; still, it is astonishing how much more popular some wrestlers can be abroad than they were at their American peak.
** Wrestling/StanHansen is the ultimate example; a moderately well known figure in American wrestling history, but one of the biggest stars in the history of Japanese wrestling.
** Matt Bloom, known as Albert and A-Train in WWE, went to Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling after his release and became their resident monster Giant Bernard.
** Mark Jindak was a rather generic midcarder in WWE (and WCW before that). He finally found stardom as Marco Corleone in Wrestling/{{CMLL}}.
** This is actually an invoked or enforced trope. In the 80's, Japanese promotions paid through the nose for American main event talent like Stan Hansen, Wrestling/BruiserBrody, Wrestling/TheRoadWarriors, and Wrestling/JimmySnuka. With wrestling's popularity and money on the wane in Japan while simultaneously going up in the US, Japanese wrestling promoters made a conscious decision to build up American wrestlers who could do the style but had never made it out of the preliminary ranks, like Scott Norton or Wrestling/{{Vader}}.
* This was responsible for (briefly) resurrecting Wrestling/HulkHogan's career as a face in Wrestling/{{WWE}}. When they set up the match between Hogan and [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson The Rock]] in shows being filmed in the US, Hogan was clearly playing the heel (coming off his stint in Wrestling/{{WCW}}) and Rock the face. The actual match was at ''Wrestling/{{WrestleMania}} X8'' in Toronto, where Hogan was so over with the crowd, mostly due to nostalgic reasons, that the announcers were clearly stunned by the crowd's reaction in treating Hogan as the face and the Rock as, at best, the WorthyOpponent.
* Wrestling/BretHart is one of the most popular wrestlers in WWE's European and Asian markets (moreso than Hogan or Austin), due to being the main TV star when WWE started exporting its programming outside of North America. Similarly, [[Wrestling/{{Batista}} Dave Bautista]] was a big star in their Mexican markets due to the perception that he was a Mexican-American (he's actually Filipino).
* Ricky Marvin is a luchador. In Mexico, he was... alright, but just a generic midcarder. During some interpromotional work with Ultimo Dragon and Toryumon, he decided to make the jump over to Japan, where he's been a fixture in Wrestling/ProWrestlingNOAH's Junior Heavyweight division since 2003.
** Lucha Libre in general is very popular in Japan, mainly due to native stars who toured Mexico in their "journeyman" stage (when wrestling was big, it was common to send preliminary wrestlers abroad to learn different types of wrestling) and brought the style back, as well as popular foreigners like Mil Mascaras. There have been a number of independent lucha promotions in Japan over the years. On the flip side, Satoru "Tiger Mask" Sayama made a very brief tour in Mexico before returning home, and is still talked about by Mexican TV commentators as one of the best and most popular luchadors ever, thirty years later.
* [[UsefulNotes/MixedMartialArts [=MMA=]]] is a curious example. In Japan, it's strongly tied to professional wrestling (thanks to the long legacy of Antonio Inoki), promoted as professional wrestling, sometimes features shoot (real) and worked (fake) matches on the same card, and it's no big deal for a "shoot" fighter to "work" a loss to build another star. In the United States, [[UsefulNotes/UltimateFightingChampionship [=UFC=]]] runs like hell from any association with professional wrestling or implications of fixed fights, and former professional wrestlers are often hated by the MMA community, regardless of how good at MMA they are, such as former UFC heavyweight champion and WWE superstar Wrestling/BrockLesnar.
** Ironically, UFC (and mixed martial arts itself) may had never hit mainstream success if it wasn't for UFC 40, which was headlined by Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock, who had started out in pro wrestling, moved to MMA, but became popular after his stint in WWE wrestling during the Wrestling/AttitudeEra and later became a household name at that time thanks to 20/20 and the [[Wrestling/{{WWE}} WWF]].
** And the lead-in to the first season of ''TheUltimateFighter'' which featured UFC's second [[GrowingTheBeard beard growing moment]]? '''''[[Wrestling/{{WWERaw}} MONDAY. NIGHT. RAW]].'''''
* Bob Sapp, in Japan. ''Website/{{Cracked}}'' [[http://www.cracked.com/blog/the-top-eight-oh-shit-moments-in-mma/ said it best:]]
-->Bob Sapp was the center of Japan's media. He had a music video, endorsed hundreds of products, and their tiny people lined up for the honor of being eaten by him. He was the Japanese equivalent of [[SuperBowl the '85 Bears]], Film/CrocodileDundee, MuhammadAli, and the California Raisins all in one.
* Yoshihiro Akiyama. In the UFC, he's an up-and-coming middleweight with an exciting intro who has won "Fight of the Night" bonuses in all of his appearances. In his home country of Japan, he's considered a disgraceful cheat after greasing his legs in a fight with legend Kazushi Sakuraba.
* This even happened with different regions in the ''same country'' during the territorial days of wrestling. For example, Bill Watts built the Louisiana-Oklahoma-Arkansas Mid-South territory around big, grizzled he-man wrestlers. At a loss as to how to turn around his business during a down period (1983), he brought in a bunch of [[MrFanservice young pretty-boy tag team wrestlers]] and a new booker from the Memphis territory, which had a surfeit of those wrestlers at the time. With booker Bill Dundee providing what had been, to Memphis, comedy finishes (such as an abortion known as the "Blind Man's Battle Royal," an all-blindfold match treated as comedy fodder in Memphis; doing the same match in New Orleans had fans ''driving ambulances'' to the arena, sure that someone would be seriously hurt or dead by the end), Watts was able to make 1984 his most profitable year in the history of the territory.
* Japanese professional wrestling (particularly in the '90s) had a dedicated fanbase among American {{Smart Mark}}s, due to the general low quality of the American product at the time. Independent group Wrestling/RingOfHonor even brought the top stars of Pro Wrestling NOAH to the States to appeal to this crowd, and before that, Wrestling/{{ECW}} (the original) brought in a number of veterans from Japanese garbage promotions like Wrestling/{{FMW}} and IWA.
** Simiarly British wrestling from the World of Sport era is beginning to gain a bit of cult following with American {{SmartMark}}s,but in the UK, due to the WWF eclipsing the entire British wrestling scene the early '90s, many wrestlers from that era are all but forgotten. Wrestling/{{CHIKARA}} even brought in 71 year old [[BadassGrandpa Johnny Saint]] as a special guest.
* With limited skills and a bizarre look, young Ian Richard Hodgkinson was unable make any name for himself in the independent circuit in his native Canada. After several years, he went down to Mexico for work, and soon became a massive star in CMLL as Vampiro. Subsequent attempts to break out in Wrestling/{{WCW}}[[note]]Vampiro would reach the upper midcards and even work a main event angle with Sting, but when WCW closed WWF didn't want him[[/note]] and Japan would lead to some success but nothing close to his stardom in Mexico.
** This goes also for his longtime professional and personal rival Wrestling/{{Konnan}}. Konnan (real name Charles Ashenoff, a Cuban-American) was a longtime midcarder for WCW, but was a main event talent in Mexico (and was able to branch out into non-wrestling Mexican TV and music careers as well).
* Norman Smiley is best remembered in the United States as a hardcore comedy act in WCW. In Mexico during the early 90s, he was massively over with the crowd and a main-event talent.
* Literalized for PN News and Salvatore Bellomo. News, real name Paul Neu, while strictly a midcarder in WCW, moved to Germany in the 2000s and is a major name there. Of course, much like Wrestling/TripleH, he married the promoter. After unsuccessful runs in WWE and ECW, Bellomo moved to Belgium and became a top guy there.

* MMA is a curious example. In Japan, it's strongly tied to professional wrestling (thanks to the long legacy of Antonio Inoki), promoted as professional wrestling, sometimes features shoot (real) and worked (fake) matches on the same card, and it's no big deal for a "shoot" fighter to "work" a loss to build another star. In the United States, UFC runs like hell from any association with professional wrestling or implications of fixed fights, and former professional wrestlers are often hated by the MMA community, regardless of how good at MMA they are, such as former UFC heavyweight champion and WWE superstar Wrestling/BrockLesnar.

* Many American wrestlers become far, far more popular overseas than they ever were in the US -- in some cases it's hard to say that this trope applies, because they often spend enough time in another country to be foreign stars rather than American stars; still, it is astonishing how much more popular some wrestlers can be abroad than they were at their American peak. Wrestling/StanHansen is the ultimate example; a relatively obscure figure in American wrestling history, but one of the biggest stars in the history of Japanese wrestling. Recently, WWE washouts A-Train and Mark Jindrak have revived their careers in this manner; A-Train became Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling's resident monster Giant Bernard before returning to WWE as Tensai, while Jindrak became Marco Corleone in Wrestling/{{CMLL}}.
** As popular as Wrestling/MickFoley and Wrestling/TerryFunk are in the US and other countries, they are bigger stars in Japan than anywhere.
** This is actually an invoked or enforced trope. In the 80's, Japanese promotions paid through the nose for American main event talent like Hansen [[note]]Contrary to what is stated above, Hansen was a main eventer in many American territories pre-WWE[[/note]], Wrestling/BruiserBrody, Wrestling/TheRoadWarriors, and Wrestling/JimmySnuka. With wrestling's popularity and money on the wane in Japan while simultaneously going up in the US, Japanese wrestling promoters made a conscious decision to build up American wrestlers who could do the style but had never made it out of the preliminary ranks, like Scott Norton or Wrestling/{{Vader}}.* This was responsible for (briefly) resurrecting Wrestling/HulkHogan's career as a face in Wrestling/{{WWE}}. When they set up the match between Hogan and [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson The Rock]] in shows being filmed in the US, Hogan was clearly playing the heel (coming off his stint in Wrestling/{{WCW}}) and Rock the face. The actual match was at ''Wrestling/{{WrestleMania}} X8'' in Toronto, where Hogan was so over with the crowd, mostly due to nostalgic reasons, that the announcers were clearly stunned by the crowd's reaction in treating Hogan as the face and the Rock as, at best, the WorthyOpponent.

* This even happened with different regions in the ''same country'' during the territorial days of wrestling. For example, Bill Watts built the Louisiana-Oklahoma-Arkansas Mid-South territory around big, grizzled he-man wrestlers. At a loss as to how to turn around his business during a down period (1983), he brought in a bunch of [[EstrogenBrigadeBait young pretty-boy tag team wrestlers]] and a new booker from the Memphis territory, which had a surfeit of those wrestlers at the time. With booker Bill Dundee providing what had been, to Memphis, comedy finishes (such as an abortion known as the "Blind Man's Battle Royal," an all-blindfold match treated as comedy fodder in Memphis; doing the same match in New Orleans had fans ''driving ambulances'' to the arena, sure that someone would be seriously hurt or dead by the end), Watts was able to make 1984 his most profitable year in the history of the territory.

** This is actually an invoked or enforced trope. In the 80's, Japanese promotions paid through the nose for American main event talent like Hansen [[note]]Contrary to what is stated above, Hansen was a main eventer in many American territories pre-WWE[[/note]], Wrestling/BruiserBrody, Wrestling/TheRoad Warriors, and Wrestling/JimmySnuka. With wrestling's popularity and money on the wane in Japan while simultaneously going up in the US, Japanese wrestling promoters made a conscious decision to build up American wrestlers who could do the style but had never made it out of the preliminary ranks, like Scott Norton or Wrestling/{{Vader}}.* This was responsible for (briefly) resurrecting Wrestling/HulkHogan's career as a face in Wrestling/{{WWE}}. When they set up the match between Hogan and [[Wrestling/DwayneJohnson The Rock]] in shows being filmed in the US, Hogan was clearly playing the heel (coming off his stint in Wrestling/{{WCW}}) and Rock the face. The actual match was at ''Wrestling/{{WrestleMania}} X8'' in Toronto, where Hogan was so over with the crowd, mostly due to nostalgic reasons, that the announcers were clearly stunned by the crowd's reaction in treating Hogan as the face and the Rock as, at best, the WorthyOpponent.

* Literalized for PN News and Salvatore Bellomo.

* Many American wrestlers become far, far more popular overseas than they ever were in the US -- in some cases it's hard to say that this trope applies, because they often spend enough time in another country to be foreign stars rather than American stars; still, it is astonishing how much more popular some wrestlers can be abroad than they were at their American peak. Wrestling/StanHansen is the ultimate example; a relatively obscure figure in American wrestling history, but one of the biggest stars in the history of Japanese wrestling. Recently, WWE washouts A-Train and Mark Jindrak have revived their careers in this manner; A-Train became Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling's resident monster Giant Bernard before returning to WWE as Tensei, while Jindrak became Marco Corleone in CMLL.
** As popular as Mick Foley and Terry Funk are in the US and other countries, they are bigger stars in Japan than anywhere.
** This is actually an invoked or enforced trope. In the 80's, Japanese promotions paid through the nose for American main event talent like Hansen [[note]]Contrary to what is stated above, Hansen was a main eventer in many American territories pre-WWE[[/note]], Bruiser Brody, the Road Warriors, and Jimmy Snuka. With wrestling's popularity and money on the wane in Japan while simultaneously going up in the US, Japanese wrestling promoters made a conscious decision to build up American wrestlers who could do the style but had never made it out of the preliminary ranks, like Scott Norton or Vader.
* This was responsible for (briefly) resurrecting HulkHogan's career as a face in the WWE. When they set up the match between Hogan and [[DwayneJohnson The Rock]] in shows being filmed in the US, Hogan was clearly playing the heel (coming off his stint in WCW) and Rock the face. The actual match was at Wrestlemania X8 in Toronto, where Hogan was so over with the crowd, mostly due to nostalgic reasons, that the announcers were clearly stunned by the crowd's reaction in treating Hogan as the face and the Rock as, at best, the WorthyOpponent.
* BretHart is one of the most popular wrestlers in WWE's European and Asian markets (moreso than Hogan or Austin), due to being the main TV star when WWE started exporting its programming outside of North America. Similarly, Dave Bautista was a big star in their Mexican markets due to the perception that he was a Mexican-American (he's actually Filipino).
* Ricky Marvin is a luchador. In Mexico, he was... alright, but just a generic midcarder. During some interpromotional work with Ultimo Dragon and Toryumon, he decided to make the jump over to Japan, where he's been a fixture in Wrestling/ProWrestlingNoah's Junior Heavyweight division since 2003.

* MMA is a curious example. In Japan, it's strongly tied to professional wrestling (thanks to the long legacy of Antonio Inoki), promoted as professional wrestling, sometimes features shoot (real) and worked (fake) matches on the same card, and it's no big deal for a "shoot" fighter to "work" a loss to build another star. In the United States, UFC runs like hell from any association with professional wrestling or implications of fixed fights, and former professional wrestlers are often hated by the MMA community, regardless of how good at MMA they are, such as former UFC heavyweight champion and WWE superstar BrockLesnar.
** Ironically, UFC (and mixed martial arts itself) may had never hit mainstream success if it wasn't for UFC 40, which was headlined by Tito Ortiz and Ken Shamrock, who had started out in pro wrestling, moved to MMA, but became popular after his stint in WWE wrestling during the AttitudeEra and later became a household name at that time thanks to 20/20 and the [[Wrestling/{{WWE}} WWF]].
** And the lead-in to the first season of ''TheUltimateFighter'' which featured UFC's second [[GrowingTheBeard beard growing moment]]? '''''[[WWERaw MONDAY. NIGHT. RAW]].'''''

-->Bob Sapp was the center of Japan’s media. He had a music video, endorsed hundreds of products, and their tiny people lined up for the honor of being eaten by him. He was the Japanese equivalent of the ‘85 Bears, Crocodile Dundee, Muhammad Ali, and the California Raisins all in one.

* Japanese professional wrestling (particularly in the '90s) had a dedicated fanbase among American {{Smart Mark}}s, due to the general low quality of the American product at the time. Independent group RingOfHonor even brought the top stars of Pro Wrestling NOAH to the States to appeal to this crowd, and before that, ECW (the original) brought in a number of veterans from Japanese garbage promotions like Wrestling/{{FMW}} and IWA.
** Simiarly British wrestling from the World of Sport era is beginning to gain a bit of cult following with American {{SmartMark}}s,but in the UK, due to the WWF eclipsing the entire British wrestling scene the early '90s, many wrestlers from that era are all but forgotten. CHIKARA even brought in 71 year old [[BadassGrandpa Johnny Saint]] as a special guest.
* With limited skills and a bizarre look, young Ian Richard Hodgkinson was unable make any name for himself in the independent circuit in his native Canada. After several years, he went down to Mexico for work, and soon became a massive star in CMLL as Vampiro. Subsequent attempts to break out in {{WCW}}[[note]]Vampiro would reach the upper midcards and even work a main event angle with Sting, but when WCW closed WWF didn't want him[[/note]] and Japan would lead to some success but nothing close to his stardom in Mexico.
** This goes also for his longtime professional and personal rival Konnan. Konnan (real name Charles Ashenoff, a Cuban-American) was a longtime midcarder for WCW, but was a main event talent in Mexico (and was able to branch out into non-wrestling Mexican TV and music careers as well).
* Norman Smiley is best remembered in the United States as a hardcore comedy act in WCW. In Mexico during the early 90s, he was massively over with the crowd and a main-event talent.

* Norman Smiley is best remembered in the United States as a hardcore comedy act in WCW. In Mexico during the early 90s, he was massively over with the crowd and a main-event talent, at one point holding the CMLL World Heavyweight Championship, which is EMLL's top title.

* Many American wrestlers become far, far more popular overseas than they ever were in the US -- in some cases it's hard to say that this trope applies, because they often spend enough time in another country to be foreign stars rather than American stars; still, it is astonishing how much more popular some wrestlers can be abroad than they were at their American peak. Stan Hansen is the ultimate example; a relatively obscure figure in American wrestling history, but one of the biggest stars in the history of Japanese wrestling. Recently, WWE washouts A-Train and Mark Jindrak have revived their careers in this manner; A-Train became Wrestling/NewJapanProWrestling's resident monster Giant Bernard before returning to WWE as Tensei, while Jindrak became Marco Corleone in CMLL.

* Ricky Marvin is a luchador. In Mexico, he was... alright, but just a generic midcarder. During some interpromotional work with Ultimo Dragon and Toryumon, he decided to make the jump over to Japan, where he's been a fixture in ProWrestlingNoah's Junior Heavyweight division since 2003.

* Japanese professional wrestling (particularly in the '90s) had a dedicated fanbase among American {{Smart Mark}}s, due to the general low quality of the American product at the time. Independent group RingOfHonor even brought the top stars of Pro Wrestling NOAH to the States to appeal to this crowd, and before that, ECW (the original) brought in a number of veterans from Japanese garbage promotions like FMW and IWA.