Researching the Chinese Pro Wrestling scene requires some serious effort and unless one is literally in China and going hands on with the research, it’s difficult to truly get all of the facts straight. One could spend hours on Google or even China’s own search engine BAIDU and come back with little answers. While there have been a few – barely documented – pro wrestling shows in China in its past, the wrestling scene in China didn’t really begin to materialize until a certain Chinese individual rose up and got himself trained professionally. This man is named The Slam. The Slam is a Chinese Pro Wrestler who on 2004, decided to pack his bags and head to South Korea to train with KPWA – run by Korean trainer Li Han Ji; a Korean pro wrestler who had experience some success wrestling in Japan. The Slam stayed in South Korea for several months, learning the basics of what it took to be a pro wrestler and came back to his home town on Dongguan to do something with his new found knowledge.
The Slam, in his spare time, would take time to build his own pro wrestling ring, and would advertise around his city about his Pro Wrestling gym. Several people who watched Pro Wrestling on the internet in China would research information about wrestling in China and the only name that would appear at the top of search engine was The Slam. After The Slam had trained enough local Chinese wrestlers, he would go on to create CWE – Chinese Wrestling Entertainment. CWE formed at the end of 2004 and has been going on since then – on and off – doing small free admission shows, as well as an internet based episodic show on the Chinese version of YouTube: Youku. You can look up the episodes by their number CWE 1-20. Almost everybody who has wrestled or trained in China has come across The Slam. Either because he trained them or showed the way to doing wrestling properly in China. In 2013, an upstart promotion based in Chongqing, China named CNWWE hired The Slam as the lead booker and General Manager, due to his long experience in the Chinese Pro Wrestling scene. What was supposed to be China’s first real shot at creating a compelling, local pro wrestling promotion, had unfortunately quickly shut down due to the incompetence of CNWWE chairman, Paul, “The Drunken Boss” Nevertheless, The Slam went back to his home province of Guangdong and started running wrestling shows in a new location, what’s now known as “Slam’s Gym.”
What’s important to note is that The Slam has never charged for giving wrestling lessons or to use his personally made pro wrestling ring; The Slam has trained dozens of wrestlers all over China and even foreign wrestlers just out of the love of pro wrestling. The Slam wants nothing more than pro wrestling in China to be successful and he is at the heart of China’s wrestling scene. Middle Kingdom Wrestling was the first to reach out to The Slam to form a partnership with his CWE trained wrestlers and MKW is so thankful for this relationship and for building a strong foundation of Chinese Pro Wrestlers in China.
