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French wrestling exists, and PROGRESS is mining it in August
Graphics via APC's Twitter

Pro wrestling is a worldwide sport/art/phenomenon. Sure, some countries have more prominent scenes than others. The United States, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and the United Kingdom all have notable companies and far-reaching cultures. Germany, Australia, and China all are emerging markets. But WWE doesn't just tour those countries. World Championship Wrestling and New Japan Pro Wrestling didn't go to North Korea just to whistle dixie. Wrestling happens in almost every country. Of all the countries and cultures around the world that don't already have a hyperfocus on them, France is probably the most surprising. The most famous wrestler in history, Andre the Giant, was a Frenchman. It's just baffling how no big spotlight was put on France until now.

PROGRESS Wrestling, one of WWE's satellite promotions, has announced that it will be running its first show in Paris in collaboration with Association les Professionnels du Catch, which is the resident indie for The City of Lights. The show is happening on August 24, and technically, it is an APC branded show. That being said, the fact that PROGRESS is sending over branding and a coterie of wrestlers is huge in that someone is finally paying attention to a country's wrestling scene that wasn't already overexposed to holy hell.

This isn't PROGRESS' first rodeo, although much like with Pete Dunne, Mark Andrews, and Moustache Mountain in the past, it had to wait for Chikara to show them the way with White Wolf Wrestling in Spain. Now, the White Wolf lads are all over the place. A-Kid not only parlayed a visit from Zack Sabre, Jr. into a five star rating from Dave Meltzer and regular PROGRESS and now WWE NXT UK bookings, but he's headed to Reseda for this year's Battle of Los Angeles. Of course, this development isn't 100 percent warm and fuzzy. The fact that PROGRESS is the one colonizing Europe's wrestling means it's really WWE doing it. The last thing the wrestling world needs is for the truffles that are wrestling cultures in heretofore underexposed countries with the pig's snout belonging to Paul Levesque.

That being said, if this visit gets eyes on APC, maybe some other enterprising French promotion will rise up and show that the country isn't just that one promotion Jim Smallman and Glen Joseph happened to find profitable for partnership. Maybe there's a deathmatch promotion in wine country that has innovated the use of bottles for weapons. Or maybe an outlaw promotion in Avignon will rise up to challenge the hegemony of other companies worldwide. Or maybe this will be the impetus for people to start mining other countries for stuff to watch before WWE gets the idea to send its proxies looking. For example, did you know Italy has a burgeoning wrestling scene? Central Africa feels like a scene ready to explode, as I've seen clips ranging from kids in Gabon "trying this at home" on the beach to the Democratic Republic of Congo having open-air, organized wrestling. Hell, other countries that have amateur wrestling cultures like Senegal and Mongolia also are ripe for organizing the scripted stuff.

The world is huge and full of possibility. It shouldn't take WWE setting feelers out for people to pay attention to countries out of the ordinary, but hey, sometimes, you just gotta take what you can get. Hopefully, this partnership between PROGRESS and APC will get enterprising, independent wrestling distributors looking at other countries. You never know, maybe the next big boom comes out of Hungary or Malaysia. Maybe it's hard for regular dickheads like you or me to stay vigilant, but hey, people in the know, they're the ones that can be doing the legwork for the rest of the wrestling fan public.