SEA Wrestling

[simonworden]

This is a little self promotional but I'm mostly sharing incase anyone here is interested in taking a look. As many of you might know I live out in South East Asia, Vietnam to be exact. Over the last year or so I posted a few show reports from Vietnam as I've been really enjoying their events and it's been really good for me to have live wrestling shows to attend again after a very long time. In doing so, I realized how much I actually enjoyed writing my thoughts about shows down and felt I wanted to do something more with it. Through VPW shows I got to meet quite a few wrestlers from other countries in the region which has led to a few months of sinking down a YouTube rabbit hole of different matches from the last couple of years. 

What that made me realize was, there's a whole blossoming wrestling scene in Southeast Asia full of really cool talent that puts on some great matches and has been interacting with different international stars from all over the world. But outside of the fans who go to these shows through thick and thin, it doesn't get much coverage.

So I decided to take some of my free time between work and family that's been heading more into online doom scrolling and other fairly toxic behaviors more recently and focus it on starting SEA Wrestling. At the start it was just going to be a fairly simple one man band website providing show results, updates, links to videos and the odd article I write on whatever topic intrigues me. However, in doing so I got a little "artistic" and decided to take some of my articles and create my own wrestling magazine also titled SEA Wrestling. 

Apart from wanting to do something to support a wrestling scene that's helped me through some tough times and give me something to do it's also helping me get mentally prepared for the challenge of doing a master's later this year after not really writing anything of substance for a while. 

I won't bore you with a huge shilling run down of the content of issue 1. But I'd love it if the UKFFers would take a look at the website and magazine. 

Please enjoy reading. It's all free by the way. 

Website

https://seawrestling.net/

Magazine

https://www.canva.com/design/DAGcVnQA6Zw/VdNL9iRxqpnXwdTGAmOJcQ/view?utm_content=DAGcVnQA6Zw&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h69f8af184b

 

[simonworden]

So we've had quite a good couple of months of wrestling in Southeast Asia and with that SEA Wrestling made it to issue 2. 

If you'd like to take a read it's here https://www.canva.com/design/DAGgfhf7r6s/IYq3KSv-7VCkdtAlAANK-A/view?utm_content=DAGgfhf7r6s&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=viewer

Of you can go to the website to download the pdf. 

Below are a few random thoughts on the site/magazine I think are with mentioning. 

I wanted to use a more dedicated link as Canva looks a bit cheap as a link but nothing else really worked or was cost effective. 

The response from wrestlers and promoters in the region has been really fantastic so far and very motivating to continue. 

I'm really proud of my long form two articles in this issue on the women wrestlers of Southeast Asia and on PSE Thailand which runs daily shows in Pattaya. 

The websites been fun to keep things ticking but it seems the magazine is what people are really interested in. 

It was nice on the magazine analytics to see quite a few UK readers for issue 1. It had about 200 independent viewers although I admit a lot were people jumping in for a few seconds. Perhaps more downloaded the PDF or the reporting is off. I hope so! 

Anyway if you get a chance please take a look and give it a little bit of a read for 5 to 10 mins. 

[simonworden]

Well, I thought I'd keep the thread going on here as I got quite a few UK views on Issue 1 and 2. I'm assuming it's you lot and I can guess what most of you were doing while you were having a gander. I hope you washed you hands!

I've managed to keep things rolling into a third issue with the SEA Wrestling Magazine project. This one I pushed out a little quicker than I thought I would as there's quite a few big shows happening in April, May and June which I want to give proper time to. 

Here's the magazine link https://www.canva.com/design/DAGnlD4bulU/n0J-ZZSAoiVXv__3HuFswQ/view?utm_content=DAGnlD4bulU&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link2&utm_source=uniquelinks&utlId=h0cc6a302c5

and here's the main website https://seawrestling.net/ if you fancy a read there or following the IG/ Facebook. I haven't bothered much with Twitter and anything else seems a bit of a waste of time at present.

A few thoughts on what's been happening in Southeast Asia's wrestling scene for the UKFF below. 

There's been some really good shows this year so far and althought attendances are smallish compared to the US or big UK indies, the venues used are selling out and more fans seem to be following rather than just popping to the odd show for a night out. 

Zack Sabre Jr's doing a short tour at the moment of a few countries. He's just done a show in the Philippines for Dexcon where he teamed with one of the more established local wrestlers Jake De Leon against Fabio Makisig (another local veteran) and El Phantasmo. From the clips I've seen it looks to have been a pretty decent match between the four and I know the local fans were really chuffed to have him back again. He's off to Singapore and Thailand end of the month as well for a couple more shows. The one in Singapore he's facing Aiden Rex who's pretty top notch and I'd recommend seeking that match out when they release it in June. The aforementioned Dexcon show will probably be on Triller TV in around a month hopefully.

If you've got Triller Dexcon's Wrestlestorm 2 is on there and that's a really decent watch especially the opener and main event. It's 2 hours of fun, mad wrestling that's definately got a different flare to anywhere else in the world.

Here in Vietnam where I live if I haven't mentioned it before VPW ramped up their storylines with a big heel turn and another great show. Anyway read the magazine for more. 

Thoughts on this issue as I'm using this as a sort of public diary. 

- The few graphical updates and changes I really like giving some sections a bit more "fun".

- It was quite a milestone to get the first interview done as I get really anxious asking people for favors and things like that but I've met Mighty Mighty a couple of times so it went really well. 

- I still want to get the online version off Canva but haven't found a free hosting solution that's better yet. Looking into hosting HTML5 docs myself but not figured it out yet.

- Personally feel it could "pop" more on some pages but I think slowly but surely it will improve.

Anyway, hope you enjoy reading.