Quick international news and notes featuring updates from Chile, Spain, Pakistan, Argentina, DRC, Portugal, San Marino and more!
Things have been busy for us here at WrestleMap as of late with several projects and some personal life things coming up. Along with that, developments have been slow in many pro wrestling scenes around the world either due to the new year or more Covid-related cancellations and postponements.
We’ve gathered up some stories and releases from around the world of pro wrestling that we thought would be of interest to our readers and compiled them into this post. Many of them are quick stories that may not be enough for a full length article so we’re going to share them here in a different format than we usually do just to bring some international pro wrestling content your way.
Chile
La V Pro Wrestling and Xplosion Nacional de Lucha have agreed to a working relationship. The two Chilean promotions have agreed to feature the XNL National Tag Team Champions at an upcoming La V Pro Wrestling Event. The two companies had worked before in the past with La V being a regional branch of the XNL when the promotion was originally established. XNL is considered to be one of the top promotions in Chile. Unfortunately, neither company has had the opportunity to be very active since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic with La V only having returned to the ring as recently as this past December while XNL has not had the opportunity to hold a live event since March 2020. The Chilean scene is one of the most exciting in South America with top talent moving into bigger promotions around the world recently.
Panama
Panama’s Global Wrestling Evolution has shared that American independent star Tiffany Nieves will be wrestling for the company at their February 18th show. Tiffany has had a big year in her first full year in the ring, having appeared for popular Texas-based independent promotion Mission Pro Wrestling and also appearing on AEW programming, competing in a match with Anna Jay on the most recent episode of AEW Dark. No opponent has been announced for Ms. Nieves’ debut in Panama but the company did announce that she will be competing in a Women’s Division match.
Pakistan
Revolution Eastern Wrestling is planning to bring their live pro wrestling show back to Karachi for the first time in close to a year with an event that’s being called Wrestlemax. Their last live event in Pakistan took place back in March of 2021. REW has experienced some growth in the time since they’ve last held a live show in Pakistan, visiting Nepal for events and striking deals with companies in other countries as well as producing the first Pakistani pro wrestling television show, Venus War. The company recently extended invitations to members of the press to attend the event, including us here at WrestleMap. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to make the trip to Karachi this time for live coverage. The event is set for this Saturday, January 22, 2022 at the Atrium Mall. There will also be a cosplay portion of the event where fans are invited to dress up as their favorite wrestler. The full match card has been released by REW and there are some interesting highlights on the card. These include: Jordan Hurr defending all three of his title belts (the REW World Heavyweight Championship, the REW Eastern Championship and REW Indian Championship) on three occasions during the show, facing off against Ahmed Boyka, Sohail Khilari and Hawkberg in separate matches; a 5 on 5 elimination match between Team XMAK (led by REW Asian Champion XMAK) and Traitors (the stable recently formed by former REW Fight or Die Champion Xekay); and Kovu Brandon taking on Noor Zai in a Pakistan vs. Afghanistan match. The Pakistan vs. Afghanistan match is particularly interesting to us since up to this point, we weren’t aware of any Afghani pro wrestlers. As per the REW office, Noor Zai is currentlly living and training in Pakistan. In another quick tidbit on REW, three of their wrestlers (Kovu Brandon, Xekay and Jordan Hurr) were recently awarded with awards from the All Pakistan Judicial Employees Association for their achievements in the ring this year.
Spain
Spain’s Sevilla Wrestling has announced that South Championship Wrestling out of Cadiz has recently joined up with their company, forming an alliance that would make SCW a subsidiary of Sevilla Wrestling. Spain’s ICHIBAN Wrestling reached a similar agreement with Sevilla Wrestling as well some time back. The three companies will now be working together to create a high quality pro wrestling product in the Andalusian region of Spain. Sevilla Wrestling has done a great job of working with other Spanish promotions to create exciting joint events, which was seen in their multi-day event at the Arnold Sports Festival in Sevilla back in September of 2021. It looks like that trend is set to continue in 2022.
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Catch Club Haut Commandement (haut commandement translates to high command) is organizing a big time three day event in Kinshasa that has already gotten underway that will feature some of the Congo’s best wrestlers and champions. Set to appear are FECOCA (Federation of Congolese Catch) Ladies Champion Queen Shakira, Mont Amba District of Kinshasa Champion Migolba, Kinshasa Champion Six Bolite and Napoleon La Croix, title belt holder from Matadi. Gesac Malema and Issa Mbangi, two popular catch fetiche wrestlers, will also be competing. The event is a great mix of some of the best voodoo wrestling and traditional pro wrestling performers in the DRC. If we were able to attend, this would be an event in the DRC that we absolutely would not miss. We’ll do our best to gather up some match videos if they’re uploaded in the near future. The “gala” as these multi-day shows are called in the DRC kicked off on Thursday, January 20th and will run through Sunday, January 23rd.
Click through for some photos of the pre-show parade, set up of the ring and some early crowd shots at the High Command gala taking place this weekend. Photos courtesy of Queen Shakira’s Facebook page and Maître Cercueil Senghor Elima’s Facebook page.
San Marino
Associazione Wrestling San Marino has released the second part of their special, Titans of Wrestling: Iron and Fire. We covered night one of the two part event just a couple weeks back. These TV-episode-style specials have featured two matches each, with the winner advancing into a tournament that will decide the new National Champion of the Titan which was vacated by previous champion, JT9, due to injury. In this week’s episode, Alex Sheridan was victorious after defeating Jacob to advance to the tournament. Sheridan’s tag team partner and co-champion El Gringo faked an injury in order to skip out on the match but Sheridan still won after getting outside help from his stablemate Psycho Mike. As a result of the match, Jacob and his son Merak challenged Alex Sheridan and El Gringo to a future match for the AWS National Tag Team Championship. In the night’s main event, Shock took down Davide Roselli in a close back and forth bout. The two wrestlers put on a good match featuring some high paced offense and some good technical wrestling. With the win, Shock advances into the tournament to crown the new AWS National Champion of the Titan and has the opportunity to add to his impressive championship history. He also has an opportunity to become a double champion as he’s currently the champion of Italy’s WIVA Wrestling. The episode closes out with the general manager of AWS, El Gordo, introducing a mysterious briefcase and announcing that a surprise will be coming soon. You can watch the entire second episode of the new Titani Del Wrestling episode below.
Portugal
Centro de Treinos de Wrestling is preparing to make their return to the ring for the first time in two years on January 29th with Incidente Internacional III (or International Incident). So far, three matches have been announced for the big comeback show but the most recent announcement caught our eye. Two of Continental Europe’s best up and coming female wrestlers will meet in the ring as current Lucha Libre Barcelona Absolute Champion Maria De La Rosa will travel to Portugal to take on Jericho Award winner Claudia Bradstone. This match between arguably the best women’s wrestlers from Spain and Portugal, respectively, should be a good one and will be a battle for supremacy of the Iberian Peninsula. We plan to take a closer look at CTW’s return to the ring in more detail prior to their January 29th return.
Angola
Angola Wrestling Entertainment is looking into the possibility of a return to live events at some point this summer as long as the Covid-19 pandemic situation allows it. The relatively young company is planning to provide the audiences of Angola with a traditional sports entertainment style of pro wrestling in a country that features a heavy dose of the voodoo wrestling style that was developed in Angola’s neighbor, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and has since become popular in the Southern African country. AWE features an Olympic hopeful amateur wrestler, a women’s division and some high flying offense that is not as popular in other parts of Africa.
Argentina
Legion Nueva Era has announced their first event of 2022. Legion closed out 2021 with a bang, crowning new champions in both of their divisions at their last event of the year. Both of those titles are set to be defended as Legion Maximum Champion Maikol will defend his belt against Guido El Demoledor. Tag team champions Conurbardo will team with a mystery partner to defend their Legion Tag Team Championship against previous champions Nemesis. This will be the first event of 2022 that will come out of the Buenos Aires indie wrestling scene that features many young and talented wrestlers so odds are that the wrestlers will come out fired up, excited to start the year off on a strong note.
One more thing….
We’ve mentioned this on social media but have yet to share it here on the WrestleMap site. We’ll be releasing a WrestleMap Exclusive video of an event that we helped put together in Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo here on WrestleMap.com soon! The event will feature a triple threat match, a regular singles match, a no disqualification match, and a main event match that will feature the champion of Brazzaville, RTGA, taking on catch fetiche specialist Lucifer in a voodoo wrestling vs. classic pro wrestling style match. The main event will quite possibly be the first match to feature the catch fetiche style that will also include English commentary. We’re very excited to release this event and will keep you all updated with details about the release date and more in the coming weeks!
