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Loved in the USA and/or Canada
- 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 young pretty-boy tag team wrestlersnote 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 Marks, due to the general low quality of the American product at the time. Independent group Ring of Honor 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.
- WCW had a long running partnership with New Japan Pro-Wrestling to send talent back and forth. Somewhat of an aversion in this case as the NJPW guys rarely drew any sort of money stateside, due to a combination of the Japanese guys not getting enough American TV time to get themselves over (with the exception of The Great Muta) and the smark fanbase that would already know them being so tiny at the time that they couldn't really move the needle. Starrcade 1995, which featured a best of 7 series between WCW and New Japan (WCW won 4-3, obviously), did a putrid PPV buyratenote despite being by far and away the best wrestling show (as in having good matchesnote ) in North America that year. NJPW eventually pulled the plug on the partnership after WCW booked their guys in too many goofy finishes, like having the New Japan junior heavyweight champ job on TV in 4 minutes after being hit in the head with a tequila bottle.
- Simiarly British wrestling from the World of Sport era is beginning to gain a bit of cult following with American smarks, but in the UK, due to the WWF eclipsing the entire British wrestling scene in the early '90s, many wrestlers from that era are all but forgotten. CHIKARA even brought in 71-year-old Johnny Saint as a special guest.
- Masato Tanaka got hugely popular in the U.S. after debuting in ECW in 1998, to the point that even Shane Douglas, who rarely had anything good to say about anyone, had to admit while on commentary that Tanaka had gotten over with the ECW fans faster than anyone he'd ever seen. Tanaka was so over that he would cut entire promos in Japanese and the mutants would cheer their heads off.
- While the name Kana had become mud in Japan due to allegations of her working too stiff and writing a "manifesto" on subjects her peers felt she had no right to, in the USA SHIMMER had relented to a fan campaign to get her on one of their shows, which was her first appearance outside of Japan. Despite only getting four dates, demand continued, which saw her come back for years to come and get booked by CHIKARA. By the mid 2010s she had joined WWE as Asuka and become one of the more successful female wrestlers of the era.
- Mike Shaw, known under numerous names in Canada and best known in the U.S. as Norman The Lunatic and Bastion Booger, was much more successful in Canada than he was in the U.S.
- Maki Itoh tends to be a heel whenever wrestling in her native Japan and a face whenever wrestling in America for this reason. Though she's popular in both territories, she's seen as more of a Laughably Evil or Love to Hate sort in Japan, given that she presents herself as a loudmouthed jerk and a failed Idol Singer. In America, these traits are seen as making her an endearing, rough-edged underdog.
Loved in Japan
- 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, 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. To this day there's a steady trickle of American wrestlers who have more success in Japan than elsewhere.
- The Californian based Empire Wrestling Federation, Ultimate Pro Wrestling and All Pro Wrestling were peculiarly popular in Japan despite being foreign indies. ARSION, Pro Wrestling ZERO1 and even some larger promotions such as New Japan and AJW would send personal invitations to many of their wrestlers, including some rookies fresh out of Jesse Hernandez's School Of Hard Knocks. This in turn raised some level for awareness of Japanese companies ARSION, Zero 1 and Fighting Opera HUSTLE among fans in fifty states.
- TNA's X Division turned out to be a surprise hit in the Japanese markets, to the point several Japanese wrestlers would use the tapes for training. Doesn't help that more than a few Japanese promotions up to and including NJPW were in something of an Audience-Alienating Era at the timenote .
- Stan Hansen 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. He's a good example of someone who benefited from this being an enforced trope - he went to Japan after working disagreements with both AWA and WCW.
- Matt Bloom, known as Albert and A-Train in WWE, went to New Japan Pro-Wrestling after his release and became their resident monster Giant Bernard. He later returned to America as Lord Tensai, trying to use his Japanese success to build American success, but it didn't work for reasons irrelevant to this trope.
- Ricky Marvin is a luchador. In Mexico, he was... alright, but just a generic midcarder. During some interpromotional work with Último Dragón and Toryumon, he decided to make the jump over to Japan, where he's been a fixture in Pro Wrestling NOAH'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 Máscaras. 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 luchadores ever, thirty years later.
- Rey Mysterio Jr. became a legend in Japan practically overnight, to the point he overshadowed the original, even getting in Fire Pro Wrestling before him. A couple decades later, the phenomenon would be repeated with IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Místico.
- Mad Man Pondo was so beloved in Big Japan Pro Wrestling that, after the company expelled the other CZW wrestlers, they kept him.
- Jeff Farmer was your typical talented midcarder who could've been big in the territory days but was stuck working in a company -WCW- during the time where it had more talent that it knew what to do with it. He began in a tag team that went nowhere followed a soldier gimmick that also went nowhere. WCW higher ups realized that Farmer had a passing resemblance to their top babyface Sting so they decided to use him as just that: a fake Sting, who's main gig was being the jobber of the New World Order who would ocasionally interrupt matches and would get squashed by the real Sting everytime they faced. He never really feuded with anyone and fans pretty much never cared about him or the gimmick. Then in March 1997, Farmer joined 'nWo Japan' in New Japan Pro-Wrestling and, because the particular situation of being the fake version of a wrestler that didn't tour Japan in those days due to his busy schedule, Farmer -now called 'nWo Sting'- ended up playing the Sting gimmick straight and became a fan favorite and way more popular in Japan than the real Sting ever was. So popular he was that he ended up spending more time in Japan than in the US and to great fanfare as well, his contract with New Japan lasting longer than his WCW one. Also, when the WWE released a retrospective DVD collection titled "The Best of Sting", a picture of Farmer as nWo Sting was featured on the back cover of the set by mistake.
Loved in Mexico
- 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 WCWnote and Japan would lead to some success but nothing close to his stardom in Mexico. Many Americans mistake him for a Mexican national; the slightly Latino accent he developed does nothing to help the misconception.
- This goes also for Vampiro's 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).
- Mark Jindrak was a rather generic midcarder in WWE, and WCW before that. He finally found stardom as Marco Corleone in CMLL, eventually becoming the first American to win the CMLL World Heavyweight Championship.
- More so a case of Love to Hate but after a title run lasting only a few days where he was completely in the shadow of Atsushi Onita in FMW and coming so close to almost doing something in All Japan Pro Wrestling, Shigeo "Anti-Mexico" Okumura would win a healthy number of tournaments, titles, masks and hairs on his path to becoming a mainstay in CMLL, where he was also a founder and regular member of the long lasting La Ola Amarilla Power Stable.
- Norman Smiley, a migrant from the UK who is best remembered in the United States as a hardcore comedy act in WCW. In Mexico, when CMLL was trying to build its international credibility during the early 90s, he was massively over with the crowd and a main-event talent.
- The Glamour Boys, Shane and Sean, are much more popular in Latin America than their native Canada, to the point Shane likes to tell people that don't know better that he's from Puerto Rico. Sean in turn would ride a similar wave that Norman Smiley did to the top of CMLL as Steele before leaving for the USA, where he wasn't quite as big a star with the porn star Val Venis gimmick but still much bigger than he was or would be in Canada.
- Simply being the (third) Japanese Black Tiger lets one know this about Kazushige NOSAWA if they're familiar with the Tiger Mask gimmick (which is itself an example in Korea and Mexico). In Japan, NOSAWA's mostly a comedy jobber outside anything that's not the indies and sometimes even on them. His fame mainly comes from wrestling in Mexico, which he recognized in 2007 after forming "Los Mexico Amigos" in All Japan Pro Wrestling to celebrate his love for the country after returning to two years of comparable non success in Japan. (it probably doesn't help that in Japan he's fairly notorious for a drug related crime that would seem over the top if it appeared in a work of fiction while in Mexico he's got the sympathy of the masses for being framed for a similar crime).
- Jack Evans has done fairly well in his native USA, but he's certainly not the superstar he became in Mexico.
- Taya Valkyrie, like Jack Evans, has done fairly well in the USA but is a major star in Mexico. North of the border, she's been lost in the shuffle in Impact Wrestling's womens division, and had a short run in WWE NXT as Franky Monet. In Mexico, she's been consistently one of the top heels of AAA's women's division, and featured in the mixed tag division as well alongside her husband Johnny (of many last names).
Loved in Europe
- NWA Ring Warriors, an attempt to make a version of New Japan Pro-Wrestling for an American Audience by Hiro Matsuda with help from Howard Brody got more viewers than both WCW and WWF during the 1990s...in Europe and Africa (and some of Asia). It was virtually unknown in the USA until 2011, and even then, mostly known to fans in Florida.
- Ring of Honor and TNA are very popular in the United Kingdom, the former setting ticket gross records, the latter having local wrestling promoters name events after TNA after pay per views and TNA getting its own British reality show. Hell, despite most who bother to look usually finding at least one promotion to suit their preferences, comparatively tiny foreign companies like Pro Wrestling Guerilla and All American Wrestling tend to be better known among the UK's wrestling fans than promotions that make up their local circuit.
- Sting has noted that of all the gimmicks he's had, the Insane Icon (the one with the Joker-like makeup) is the most popular among UK fans. It helps that he used it when TNA had the peak of its UK viewing figures (2011-12).
- Bret Hart is one of the most popular wrestlers in WWE's European and Asian markets (more so 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-Greek).
- Literalized for PN News. 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 Triple H, he married the promoter.
- Fandango is inordinately popular in the UK. It's hard to say what set it off, but his entrance in particular is crazy over and he gets great reactions at every British show despite usually not being a pushed talent.
Loved Elsewhere
- Professional wrestling has become a particularly quirky hit in the South American country of Bolivia. In part this is due to the lucha libre influence from Mexico, but the Bolivians are also huge fans of WWE (John Cena, Batista, and Rey Mysterio are particular favorites)... and, oddly enough given the somewhat chauvinistic Bolivian culture, the WWE Divas. Indeed, the Bolivians seem to delight in giving women's wrestling a native twist by having their cholitas (their equivalent word for "Divas") compete in the English bowler hats and long, ruffled skirts that comprise the traditional costume of Aymara Indian women (which is otherwise hardly ever worn in modern-day Bolivia). Amusingly enough, some of the cholitas could teach their North American counterparts a trick or two: one match witnessed by a reporter writing for National Geographic about the phenomenon booked several cholitas against a gigantic Egyptian mummy named "Ramses"; for comparison, just try to imagine Bella Twins taking on The Undertaker!
- The Colón family are pro wrestling royalty in Puerto Rico but aren't nearly as over anywhere else, usually due to halfhearted pushes or too brief stays. The exception being Cuban fans, both of the diaspora and on the island, who for whatever reason love them and their CSP/WWC promotion, particularly patriarch Carlos, the one who spends the most time playing up his Puerto Rican heritage.
- Many b-list American and Canadian wrestlers became stars in Puerto Rico's World Wrestling Council, especially those with high technical or garbage wrestling skills. Guys like Greg Valentine, Tiger Ali Singh, Charlie Haas, Shelton Benjamin, Bruiser Brody, Jon Heidenreich, Lance Hoyt, King Mabel, Steve Strong and especially Abdullah the Butcher are legendary in the memories of Puerto Rican fans.
- This was responsible for (briefly) resurrecting Hulk Hogan's career as a face in WWE. When they set up the match between Hogan and 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 reasonsnote , that the announcers were clearly stunned by the crowd's reaction in treating Hogan as the face and the Rock as, at best, the Worthy Opponent.
- Even before he joined WWE and became Andrade, Brillante Jr, who later came to be known as La Sombra in CMLL, was one of the most critically acclaimed luchadores/wrestlers among German publications and websites despite never having wrestled in Germany, or Europe for that matter, spending roughly 90% of his pre-WWE career in Latin America and the other rough 10% in Japan. A lot of his work isn't even in individual efforts but in trio matches.
- Among ROH wrestlers, BJ Whitmer was one who was part of the invasion against IWA Puerto Rico but the fans ended up loving him.
- Kairi Hojo, a joshi who had been wrestling less than half a decade whose appearances outside of Japan were mostly limited to the Mexican independent circuit, quickly developed a dedicated following in Indonesia.
- Roman Reigns is beloved in India. Moreover, he was beloved there at the same time he was receiving X-Pac Heat everywhere else. Maybe it's because Indian fans are more likely to still think wrestling is real and accept his push at face value, maybe it's because he looks ethnic enough that they relate. Either way, the tendency of Indian wrestling fans showing up to defend Reigns in any argument on the internet has become a running joke around the pro wrestling fandom.
- The Von Erich Family are quite popular in Israel (ironic given how patriarch Fritz used to have a gimmick that wouldn't fly over well in Israel) mainly due to World Class Championship Wrestling being broadcast in Israel on Saturday nights in the fed's prime. It got to the point where Kevin Von Erich wrestled his final match, teaming with his sons Marshall and Ross, in the country in 2017.
- Sick Nick Mondo, an independent wrestler best known for getting cut with a weed whacker during a CZW event in his own country, developed enough of a fan base in Italy of all places to get personal invitations from promotions stationed there to train wrestlers.
- Stu Hart's Stampede Wrestling became a smash hit in the Caribbean island of Antigua, thanks to the presence of their fellow Charles "Otis Taylor" Buffong in the roster. During their tours to the island, announcer Ed Whalen would get mobbed like a rock star, and even a reggae song about the promotion was recorded.
MMA examples
- MMA is a curious example. In Japan, it's strongly tied to professional wrestling (thanks to the long legacy of Antonio Inoki and his apprentices), 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 Brock Lesnar.
- 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 Attitude Era and later became a household name at that time thanks to 20/20 and the WWF.
- And the lead-in to the first season of The Ultimate Fighter which featured UFC's second beard growing moment? MONDAY. NIGHT. RAW.
- Bob Sapp, in Japan. Cracked 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 the '85 Bears, "Crocodile" Dundee, Muhammad Ali, and the California Raisins all in one. - Yoshihiro Akiyama. In his home country of Japan, he's considered a disgraceful cheat after greasing his legs in a fight with legend Kazushi Sakuraba. In the UFC, he was at one point an up-and-coming middleweight with an exciting intro who won "Fight of the Night" bonuses in his first three appearances, although in the end he hit his ceiling sooner than expected and ended up released by the UFC after going 1–4.
