1989: WWF vs Pakistan wrestling

This was a two week long or maybe a month long event, taking place around the same time as Saver Raffle and SAF games. The wrestling matches were taking place at Fortress Stadium Lahore, and were being shown on PTV in the evening after Khabarnama.

The competition was kind of a triangular, there were Pakistani wrestlers, Indian wrestlers and some low key WWF wrestlers. However, the sheer number of people turning out to see the competition was amazing; **at least 20K people were in the stadium everytime. **

Personally, this was my first exposure to Pakistani Pehelwans like Jhara, Sohail, and Nasir Bholu, and to certain terms as “Dhobi Patka”. Some of the WWF wrestlers that I remember were “Billy the Kid” (called Bleethy Kid by the commentator :hehe:, St John (called Ess Tee John by local commentators :hehe:) and Haiti. The only Indian pehelwan that I remember was Kala Pehelwan. The pakistani pehelwans took it very seriously :smack:, while the WWF wrestlers were expecting an acting show; the result was not very good for the WWF wrestlers. Almost every match resulted in a bleeding WWF wrestler seen as having altercations with the referee, officials and the Pakistani wrestler while walking out.

I do not remember the name of the competition; perhaps it was called Royal Dangal or something. It was extremely entertaining, and the **pictures from a fight used to be all over both the English and Urdu dailies the next day. :hooray:
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