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[title]It’s a sweltering Saturday night in Pattaya, but the oppressive humidity has nothing on the mayhem unfolding inside the ring. A gargantuan local hero named Blobtang is nonchalantly smoking a cigarette mid-match, and the crowd is a screaming, beer-sloshing sea of pure energy. This isn’t the WWE your dad watched in the ‘90s, nor is it the stoic ‘strong style’ of Japan. This is ‘Pattaya Style’. This is Paradise Sports Entertainment (PSE).
At the centre of this organised chaos is SunnyZ, a man juggling two distinct personas with relentless drive. In the ring, he’s a powerhouse competitor with a devastating finishing move called the ‘SUN-KNEE’. Outside of it, he’s the ambitious founder, promoter, and heart of Thailand’s most vibrant new wrestling promotion. He’s the boss, the booker, and occasionally, the builder.
‘I believe wrestling should be sports entertainment’, SunnyZ explains, his passion for the project evident in every word. He speaks quickly, sentences tumbling over each other as if he can’t get the ideas out fast enough. ‘I don't want to be an old-school, traditional promotion. I want to do something different, with more colour and more fans involved. I want people to feel they are part of the show, not just spectators watching us and then going home’.
The journey to create this paradise was an unconventional one. A long-time wrestling fan, SunnyZ, a Canadian of Chinese heritage, found himself living in Toronto in his thirties feeling, as he bluntly puts it, ‘f***ing dead inside’. He was stable, successful and had followed the path his parents had hoped for – work, make money, buy a house. But something was missing. ‘Anywhere I went, people would say, “Oh my, you’re a big Chinese guy, you speak Mandarin and English, you should try wrestling!” So many people told me, I was like, “Okay, why not?”’ He signed up for a wrestling school in Toronto just for fun, and was instantly hooked. ‘After that, I was so into it. I had a great time wrestling as a part-timer’.
But it was a move to Thailand that sparked his entrepreneurial spirit. ‘I just love it here too much’, he laughs. ‘For me, Thailand is the perfect balance between West and East. I spent 16 years in China and 20 years in Canada, so I’m 50/50. This is the perfect mix’. The one thing his new home lacked was a wrestling scene that matched the intensity he craved. ‘I missed it so much. There are other good schools here, but the training wasn't as frequent as I was used to. So I thought, “I need to find a place to train for myself”. That's how it all started’.
What began as a personal training project with his friend and fellow wrestler, Benji, quickly snowballed. They hosted impromptu fights in boxing rings and on the street, drawing an immediate, enthusiastic response. Soon, a school became a business, and a business needed a proper ring. The challenge was immense. ‘Oh, it was super f***ing hard’, he recalls of the construction. ‘In Thailand, it’s extremely hard. In America, you can order one, but it’s expensive and takes forever to ship. So I found a boxing ring guy and walked him through it step-by-step. I was driving my car every day to these middle-of-nowhere places to build it by hand. I basically became a builder. In Canada, I was definitely not a handyman!’
Now, approaching its second anniversary, PSE is thriving. It stands as the only promotion in Southeast Asia with a roster of full-time, salaried wrestlers. For SunnyZ, that’s the real victory, the core of his mission. ‘My goal is that I want our wrestlers to get fully paid’, he says. ‘So they can make a living from wrestling while they're in Thailand’.
The PSE philosophy is built on a foundation of pure, unadulterated entertainment. SunnyZ’s vision is crystal clear and unapologetically visual. ‘The type of guys I'm looking for is a different ratio compared to other companies’, he insists. ‘I want a guy who, the moment he comes out from behind the curtain, before he’s even in the ring, people are like, “Whoa, this guy looks like a character”. The first impression is the look. That's the sad truth in wrestling’.
PSE’s global recruitment drive has resulted in a glorious menagerie of personalities. The roster features the seasoned expertise of French veteran Marc Sebire, the hard-hitting fighting spirit of Japan’s Kojio Akumu and the raw power of Canada’s Ryan Rogan. These international talents share the stage with pure spectacles like Wam Bam Bellows – a ‘South Australian giant’ who dwarfs his opponents. And at the heart of it all is the champion, Blobtang, a super-new talent who has become a local phenomenon. ‘He’s famous on social media, even Snoop Dogg posts about him,’ SunnyZ explains. The key, he stresses, is variety. ‘If you see our guys, nobody looks like anyone else. I want diversity. No duplication of characters’.
This anything-goes ethos, dubbed ‘Pattaya Style’, bleeds into the performances themselves. One night might see a wrestler use a scooter from the street as a weapon. It’s less a rigid script and more a high-octane improv show with suplexes. ‘You look around, see how many kids are there, and that's how you decide on the night’, he says with a grin. ‘If we’re in a mall, we tell the guys, “Keep it PG”’.
But for all its rebellious bravado, the promotion is built on more than just shock value. The personalities themselves offer a compelling contrast, reflecting the true diversity of Pattaya beyond its stereotypes. SunnyZ is keen to showcase this duality, and no one embodies it better than one of his key international veterans. ‘Marc Sebire has a beautiful, stable family life with his Thai wife and kids. He represents the wholesome side of Pattaya... which makes a nice contrast to the rest of us!’ SunnyZ adds with a laugh.
Life as the boss has forced SunnyZ to evolve. The carefree wrestler who partied with his colleagues after shows has been replaced by a focused promoter who heads home to rest. He draws on his past as a fitness trainer in Canada to ensure his crew stays healthy, proudly noting they’ve had no major injuries in two years despite a gruelling schedule. ‘It’s a different role’, he admits. ‘When I was a wrestler, I was the nice guy in the locker room. Now I'm the owner, there are rules. I need to make sure everybody is on check’. The hardest part, he confesses, is the human resources side of the job – managing pay, egos, and expectations. ‘I miss just being a wrestler’, he says wistfully.
His own career has been a fascinating journey, including a surprising detour into acting. ‘You know the documentary series Dark Side of the Ring? I’m actually in that one’, he reveals. ‘The show was shot in Toronto. Before I moved here, if they needed an Asian guy, it was me. They’d put a wig on me, cover my tattoos, and I’d be in the recreation scenes’.
The biggest challenge now, he says, isn’t finding venues or talent, but convincing a new audience – and potential investors – that PSE is more than just a novelty. His ultimate goal is to land a ten-episode season on a major Thai television network. ‘You know, like WWE has Monday Night Raw? I want to have, maybe, Sunday Night PSE. Once a week’. It’s not just about exposure; it’s about legitimacy. He wants to prove PSE is a serious, long-term venture and, most importantly, to honour the wrestlers who have stuck by him. ‘There are a bunch of guys who, to build the company, sacrificed and stayed with me for very little money, or no money sometimes’, he says, his tone shifting from promoter to loyal friend. ‘If I have the money, I'd rather spend it on my own people. I’m not gonna pay for big names. We are the big names for the local scene’.
For now, he’s building his paradise one show at a time, fuelled by a deep love for his adopted home and the wild, wonderful world of professional wrestling. His hunt for new talent is relentless, with a particular focus on finding female wrestlers to add even more diversity to the roster. He’s creating a dream for aspiring performers: come to Thailand, experience an incredible lifestyle and become a star. When asked for his final pitch to a curious newcomer, his answer is simple and direct, much like a punch to the chest.
‘PSE is pro wrestling, but it's also sports entertainment’, he declares. ‘It’s something you've never seen before. It's not WWE, it's not New Japan. You have to come to see this unique way of sports entertainment’. He’s right. You really do.