Questions re: WWE UK/Japan/Mexico partnerships

[Joe Neglia]

Hey all, working on something stupid, but had some questions I was hoping someone here wouldn't mind answering.

1. What are all of the various British and UK promotions that have worked with WWE in the last few years? Evolve, for sure, but which other ones have actively worked with them?

2. Can anyone give me a basic rundown of the various times since 1982 that McMahon has partnered with a Japanese promotion (i.e. extended talent exchanges)

3. How long did the AAA partnership that resulted in all the luchadores in Rumble '97 last. Was Super Astros part of this deal, or was that something different? Did WWE ever partner with AAA or CMLL/EMLL at any other points?

Thanks in advance.

[eJm]

Well, for your first question, it's sort of split into two groups.

The promotions that work closely the most with WWE so essentially PROGRESS and Insane Championship Wrestling, and everyone else who until recently had access to the talent anyway so Riptide, Fight Club: Pro, Pro Wrestling Eve, Attack etc. But if we're putting it to now, it's Fight Club: Pro, Futureshock and Attack!. OTT's there but they're considered European since they're based in Ireland so it's hard to count them as much.

PROGRESS and ICW are the ones that more likely to get some of the bigger NXT names coming in and doing stuff so Killian Dane (formerly Big Dano) came back to ICW where he made his name just a couple of weeks ago to have a match and Marcel Barthel made his PROGRESS debut this past weekend. ICW was the first UK promotion, I believe, to have a WWE UK title match. Another weirder example was from what was then called WCPW for their big world cup tournament where Michael Elgin was injured and had to be replaced and somehow pulled off getting Joseph Connors to be that replacement. Ironically, Defiant is now one of the promotions people are banned from taking bookings for so...

Until recently, some of the others were getting appearances from British Strong Style, Toni Storm and the like but since they're being signed to bigger paid contracts, they've just left those to go to WWE "full time". Except from THAT, you have Charlie Morgan saying she'll still be in Pro Wrestling Eve for a bit and Jordan Devlin saying he'll still be on OTT shows but whether those can be recorded for on-demand services is up in the air.

Hope that makes sense because I'm just about wrapping my head around it.

[67 more]

WWF worked with the Universal Lucha Libre promotion in Japan very shortly to create the WWF IC Tag titles in 1991.