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Spiritual Successor / Pro Wrestling
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Spiritual Successor in Professional Wrestling.


In fact, we have a similar trope that more specifically covers pro wrestling.
  • The "Professional Girl Wrestling Association"(PGWA) was founded in 1992 to be one to the 1960s "American Girl Wrestling Association"(AGWA).
  • The NWA Canadian Heavyweight Title established in 1993 and defended in ECCW is the successor to the belt established in 1946 that was defended in the Calgary Territory that preceded the Hart Family's Stampede.
  • After the American Wrestling Association stopped operating, former employees got together AWA Superstars Of Wrestling and started licensing the AWA name to other wrestling promotions as far away as the UK and Australia. When WWE bought the rights to the AWA the AWA SOW company changed their name to Wrestling Superstars Live but WWE still sued them into closure. After WSL closed, Carolina Wrestling Federation Mid-Atlantic is the closest thing to a direct AWA successor the folks up north didn't manage to kill. Pro Wrestling International can kind of be seen as a successor to the post AWA "alliance", given CWF Mid-Atlantic's membership.
  • Tongue in cheek all women's promotion GLOW spawned a number of spiritual successors, such as POWW, the LPWA, CRUSH, Women Of Wrestling and Wrestlicious. Despite their names and premises, SHIMMER and SHINE are not examples, instead being recurring showcases of the best and the future of the business. The names are slightly coincidental but GLOW is an acronym, the latter two's abbreviations are SWA and SW.
  • The UFC is considered by some to be the successor to Pro Wrestling in general, since it follows the same exact model, although lately they have been trying to move away from that structure. More accurately, UFC is what pro wrestling would be like if it weren't scripted. Although the designation "more accurately" goes to Tiger Mask's Shooto, the first "MMA" company ever, founded when he got sick of money politics.
  • Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling got three unofficial successors. ECW in the U.S, Big Japan Pro Wrestling and Xtrem Mexican Wrestling. Officially, World Entertainment Wrestling, Wrestling Marvelous Future, USO and Onita Pro, which all launched to fill the void left by FMW and employ its roster. These four companies then joined together to form The Apache Army, until FMW's revival.
  • The New World Order angle in WCW was preceded by an executive veto to a SMW invasion. WCW's farm league, The Heartland Wrestling Association, was also preceded by a WCW-Smoky Mountain talent exchange, Heartland starting in 1996, one year after Smoky Mountain Closed down.
  • Through 1997 through the mid 2010s, Fabulous Frank acted as the spiritual successor of 1980s Jim Cornette in Future of Wrestling, he even hits people with a tennis racket.
  • Jimmy Jacobs wanted to be the successor to Bruiser Brody, The Bersker, The Barbarian, and Kevin Sullivan all at once. As is, Sullivan is the one Jacobs turned out the most like. A small baby face who turned into an evil leader of a giant Power Stable. The Age Of The Fall itself is not a successor to the Army Of Darkness by any means, SCUM is like a more realistic and ambitious Dungeon of Doom while The Flood leaves out the "realistic" part. Jacobs also has his own much larger lackey he corrupted in BJ Whimter to Sullivan's Jake Roberts. Jacobs also had female bodyguards in the Minnesota Home Wrecking Crew to Sullivan's Fallen Angel, Luna Vachon and Jacqueline, plus obsessive feuds over a girl with Colt Cabana and Austin Aries to Sullivan's with Chris Benoit. Also, Jacobs stole Kevin Sullivan's famous rail road spike while claiming it was a gift(a very Sullivan thing to do).
  • A humorous case happened in the 2000s to early 2010s when the NWA launched a spiritual successor to CWF Florida called Championship Wrestling from Hollywood (in Hollywood, California; the older one operated in Hollywood, Florida) and the WWE launched a revival of Florida Championship Wrestling. For those who don't get it, they both ran revivals/successors of the same company at once. Championship Wrestling from Florida had been erroneously called "Florida Championship Wrestling", which was one of its many B Shows, for years and was forced to temporarily change its name to the B Show title in 1988 when Mike Graham wanted to return to promoting but found someone else had the "Championship Wrestling from..." rights. The NWA would require these CWF rights in 2003, so WWE themselves fell back on the FCW designation.
  • Pro Wrestling NOAH is the spiritual successor of All Japan Pro Wrestling of the 1990s before the passing of Giant Baba while Wrestle-1 is the spiritual successor of All Japan's eleven year rebuilding period under The Great Muta.
  • WWE's World Heavyweight Championship is this to WCW's top title of a similar name and design, which was unified into the WWE Championship months after the company's purchase of WCW.
  • ECW was so great it needed two promotions to fill the void it left. Ring of Honor is the successor to the technical wrestling and Combat Zone Wrestling is the successor to hardcore wrestling (though CZW was actually founded 2 years before ECW folded). Both promotions run most of their shows in ECW's home venues such as The Arena in Philadelphia and The Manhattan Center in New York. However, they didn't belong to the NWA (though CZW tried and NWA went to ROH for it's "Reclaiming The Glory" angle) and out of these two, only ROH enjoyed any lasting television dealsnote .
    • Game Changer Wrestling would later become a third successor for ECW emphasizing both its hardcore and technical sides as well embracing more of ECW's anti-establishment underdog attitude that the other two lacked.
  • TNA is WCW, had WCW not been bought out by Vince McMahon.
    • In particular, TNA in 2010-2011 was almost exactly the same as WCW in 1996-1997. Heel turn by Hulk Hogan and his emergence as the leader of a dictatorial faction (New World Order in WCW, Immortal in TNA), Eric Bischoff as his sycophant, and Sting as the Robin Hood figure who leads a crusade to defeat them both.
    • Also similar are ridiculous, offensive storylines, and stupid match stipulations, and the burial of promising talent because nobody outshines Hulk Hogan.
    • Dixie Carter was a lesser version of Ted Turner, a patron with near-endless cash who took a hands-off approach to managing their promotion, and whom that Bischoff, Hogan, and Russo sucked up to so that they could receive and give extravagant contracts to their buddies (that never paid out).
    • Interestingly, TNA usually refuses to acknowledge WWE by name (references are often highly elliptical) even though WWE took on all of WCW's canon as part of its own continuity when it incorporated it.
    • As TNA was a splinter from the NWA and a successor to WCW, Fortune was to be a successor to The Four Horsemen, which was prominently featured in both promotions, even being spelled "Fourtune" before it expanded to six members.
  • NWA-TNA was also the spiritual - if not acknowledged - successor to the WWA (World Wrestling All-Stars), an Australian-based promotion that sprang up after WCW closed and aired 5 pay-per-views in the U.S., all of which can be seen on YouTube. The two companies had nearly identical talent rosters, much of the same broadcast and backstage staff (TNA interviewer Jeremy Borash was the booker and lead commentator of the WWA), and the company shut down shortly after TNA started up. The final WWA show saw the WWA World Heavyweight and Cruiserweight championships absorbed into the NWA World Heavyweight Championship and the TNA X-Division Championship, respectively. This led many fans to refer to the WWA as the "beta version" of the company now known as Impact Wrestling.
  • After the fall of Lucha Underground as well earlier supernatural elements through Rosemary and The Broken Universe, the newly christened Impact Wrestling has carried on LU's torch for weirdness as well.
    • MLW would later incorporate elements of Lucha Underground as well, rechristening it Azteca Underground, starting it as a stable of LU alumni and later spinning it off into it's own brand.
  • Chigusa Nagayo's GAEA promotion has two spiritual successors. Sendai Girls Pro Wrestling, founded by Nagayo's student Meiko Satomura the year GAEA closed down, and Marvelous, another promotion founded by Nagayo herself nine years later. Of the two Sendai Girls is a little less so, starting with the fact it didn't have the global aspirations of its predecessor until Satomura beat STARDOM's then top wrestler Kairi Hojo and started using that promotion's world title belt to legitimize Sendai Girls as a "world" promotion. Also, the W-Fix team of KAORU and DASH Chisako that has done double duty in Sendai Girls and Marvelous at least started as a spiritual successor to the D-Fix team of GAEA, which was Mayumi Ozaki and that very same KAORU.
  • SHIMMER is more so the spiritual successor to IWA Mid-South's Volcano Girls tournaments, another project in Ian Rotten's quest to show his promotion was not just for garbage wrestlers and an early step in Dave Prazak's catering to wrestling fans who wanted to see more from the women involved in the sport. It also featured several wrestlers who would later be in SHIMMER, co founder Allison Danger not the least of them.
  • The NWA Historic titles created in 2010 are successors to the three belts of the same name that used to be exclusive to CMLL. In fact, CMLL treats them as if they are the same exact belts, except the historic title belts are still exclusive while the originals are defended wherever the NWA wants them to be.
  • Nanae Takahashi's World Wonder Ring STARDOM's is a spiritual successor to All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling, it's two top singles titles being deliberately molded after the WWWA titles that Zenjo held in highest esteem. It's also a successor to NEO Women's Pro Wrestling, having Neo's "High Speed" title belt. It's also a spiritual successor to JDStar, former promoter Hiroshi Ogawa also being a founder, one of the final wrestlers to come out of JDStar's "Athtress" program, Fuka, being the third founder and general manager. The resulting product is sight to behold.
  • The Texas Tornado Kerry Von Erich received two in 2011, the Texas Tornadoes tag team of Galan Ramirez and Jacob Kilgore.
  • SHINE Wrestling Trio Made In Sin (Allysin Kay, Taylor Made and April Hunter) are a mix between spiritual successor and alternate company equivalent to the second incarnation of The Midwest Militia as seen in WSU and SHIMMER (Allysin Kay, Sassy Stephie and Mademoiselle Rachelle-the fallout between Allysin Kay and Jessicka Havok happened elsewhere). Made In Sin later joined together with Radiant Rain and Ivelisse VĂ©lez to form Valkyrie, a spiritual successor to Rain's Army whom the original Midwest Militia split off from (thanks to Jessicka Havok, whom they unsurprisingly targeted before long). After Rain's retirement and Velez's expulsion forced Valkyrie to reorganize, SoCal Val, recognizing a winning formula when she saw it, started a group called Valifornia, an expy of the original Valkyrie, minus an Ivelisse analog. Velez for her part, started her own Valkyrie like group, Las Sicarias, partially for protection from what was left of the original only to see Val's group merge with that enemy to create the most powerful version of Valkyrie yet, threatening to swallow everything. The Good Counterpart, Las Sicarias, did win in the end, only to be beaten down by yet another Valkyrie like group called C4, whom LuFisto had brought together almost out of the blue.
  • After joining the NWA in 2013, All Action Wrestling declared they would be to Australian wrestling what NWA World Championship Wrestling used to be in the 60s-70s.
  • Shayna Baszler clearly stated she approached SHIMMER Champion Mercedes Martinez and Heart Of SHIMMER Nicole Savoy for the purpose of forming The Trifecta because that's what she did in mixed martial arts with Ronda Rousey, Marina Shafir and Jessamyn Duke to form The Four Horsewomen. Considering the first two pro wrestlers Baszler supposedly approached were Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly, who not only became reDRagon but were assisted by Baszler in retaining the Ring of Honor Tag Team Titles there might be more entries in the series than she's letting on...
  • WCW got another spiritual successor in 2019 with the debut of All Elite Wrestling. Let us count the ways...
    • Based in the American South? Check.note 
    • A Rhodes holding the book? Check.note 
    • A weekly show on TNT? Check.note 
    • A popular faction of real-life close friends up front and center? Check.note 
    • International agreements that grant access to cutting-edge talent? Check.note 
    • A billionaire backing it all? Check.note 
    • AEW even stars some notable talent who were part of WCW back in the day, such as Tony Schiavone, Jim Ross, Chris Jericho, Arn Anderson and Tully Blanchard.
    • And in March 2021, AEW got its own successor to the Horsemen in The Pinnacle, complete with Horsemen OG Blanchard filling the James J Dillon role.
  • And AEW also serves as the spiritual successor to Impact Wrestling's predecessor company TNA.
    • Headquartered in the South? Check.note 
    • Launched by a second-generation former WWE Intercontinental Champion? Check.note 
    • Tazz on commentary? Check.
    • Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian? Check.
    • Sting? Check.
    • "Broken" Matt Hardy? Check.
    • Kia Stevens using the ring name "Awesome Kong"? Check.
    • Christian jumping ship from WWE and restoring his full ring name of "Christian Cage"? That happened too. And he even got to keep his TNA theme song!note 
    • A bald WWE mainstay making a shocking switch to the rival company? Kurt Angle did it in TNA, why not The Big Show?note 
    • To bring things full circle, Impact is in a working relationship with AEW.
    • To really bring things full circle, Jeff Jarrett is now on the AEW roster.

Alternative Title(s): Professional Wrestling

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