A Magical Interview With Malaysia Pro Wrestling (MyPW)

This evening was a special event for me, as I was working on my next article. I was in the mist of researching one of the rising stars in Asia, Malaysia Professional Wrestling (MyPW) and the promotion’s representative quickly replied to my initial contact over Facebook.  It is important to understand the story of such promotions and with the gracious opportunity before me, I seized the moment to conduct the following interview.  I can not thank Malaysia Pro Wrestling enough for taking time out of their schedule and agree to this with no prior warning.  I will always be in their debt.

SC: Thank you for spending time to speak with me.

MYP: It is a pleasure, we are truly grateful for any feedback we can receive from our fanbase.  It is very important to MYPW to maintain strong relations with our fans.

MYP: Professional wrestling has always been popular in Malaysia, beginning in the 1980s with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and World Class Wrestling (WCW).  Fans in the country couldn’t attend live events, so we established fan clubs which became a tight community.  Our founder, Mr. Ayez Shaukat Fonseka grew up being a fan, but believed our fans deserved a promotion of our own.  In April 2014, Malaysian Pro Wrestling was born.

SC: The fanbase sounds remarkable.

MYP: It is true, we didn’t just meet to watch events on television.  We also coordinated with each other for other activities.  We became more than friends, we became family.

SC: What were some of the challenges MYPW faced during those early years?

MYP:  Malaysia didn’t have a wrestling school or a professional trainer in the beginning.  One of our volunteers, Mr. Shaukat took a three week course under Rick Drasin (trained by WWE HoF Mae Young) and he found a mentor in form of Dr. Tom Prichard.  Mr. Shaukat became our head trainer and we began as a wrestling school.   It took two years before we were able to hold our first event in 2016 MyPW Uprising.