Why did wrestling never take off in South Korea beyond the 70s, the way it did in the rest of the US-aligned world? (Not just Japan and Mexico but also Germany and shit)They have a massive entertainment industry with a crazy celebrity culture, and love American sports. Seems like it could have been at least ended up a decent indie market or WWE tour stop or something.
>>21024632Lack of interest at the time and not a lot of people knew about pro wrestling in that country until recently. Last year, they had a show called Wrestle Nation at the KBS Arena in Seoul that drew 3,000 people which was probably the highest attended wrestling event in South Korea.
>>21024632was still a dictatorship until the late 80s
>>21024639Really must have been some cultural or language disconnect that caused disinterest there, because I imagine American promoters would have tried shilling it hard there over the yearsPro wrestling's overseas popularity seems to map pretty consistently with post-WW2 US occupation, coconuts and island Puerto Ricans are crazy overrepresented in the wrestling business
>>21024673Every Korean ex prime minister is in jail
>>21024674Also, Pro Wrestling Society, one of the largest South Korean-based promotions, held another Wrestle Nation show a few months ago that drew a similar number of senpaitachi.
>>21024632The catalysts of pro wrestling in Japan were Korean: Rikidozan essentially founding puroresu in the 50s and Akira Maeda in the 80s and 90s popularising shootstyle and influencing the MMA gigaboom.
>>21024673But wrestling was massive in Argentina so this clearly isn't a complete negator.
>>21024674Why did Germany take to pro-wrestling in a massive way, but Italy didn't? They had roughly the same number of US troops post WW2, plus Italy had its economic miracle of the early 60s.
>>21024882Italians already had football, motorsport and beautiful women as national passtimes and are overall less autistic than G*rmans.
Wrestling is literally only taken seriously in US, Mexico and Japan. In the rest of the world it's at best something that people watch ironically while laughing at Americans and a small local scene.
>>21024882Lol, lmao. They have one local promotion created in 2000 and their events generally have an attendance of like 300.
