AEW Dynamite Top 5 Moments (Video), NJPW Opens New Dojo, Masked Republic Announces Partnership

By Joshua Gagnon

- Above, Jennifer Decker runs through the top five moments from last week's AEW Dynamite. The moments were: Britt Baker breaking Yuka Sakazaki's tooth, Adam Page not tagging out and losing the match for his team, Nyla Rose ambushing AEW Women's World Champion Riho, Jon Moxley jabbing Santana's eye, and Cody taking 10 lashes at the hands of MJF.

- Masked Republic announced a partnership with FanGirl Consulting and Brand Management to help promote and expand upcoming Expo Lucha Live Events. Below is the full announcement:

San Diego, CA & Orlando, FL ? February 10, 2020 – Masked Republic®, the multi-platform entertainment company dedicated to expanding the Mexican cultural phenomenon of lucha libre beyond the borders of Mexico, has tagged in FanGirl Consulting & Brand Management to help manage and expand its Expo Lucha fan convention and live event beginning with this summer's Expo Lucha®: Philadelphia.

Started in 2018, Expo Lucha is the world's largest lucha libre fan convention and immersive experience, and the only event of its kind held outside of Mexico. Attendees not only get to meet the heroes, legends and superstars of lucha libre up-close and personal, but they also get to experience authentic live lucha libre action with matches held throughout the two-day event. Many of these lucha libre icons have rarely, if ever, appeared outside of Mexico and Expo Lucha brings them together all in one place allowing thousands of fans to celebrate their love of lucha libre together in a family friendly environment. Expo Lucha's previous stops include Las Vegas, NV and San Diego, CA., and now, as the experience prepares to make its east coast debut, it has a new tag team partner in the quest to become champion of the pop-culture scene.

"We are very proud of how quickly we have been able to build our home grown lucha libre convention," Masked Republic founder and CEO Ruben Zamora said, "But, with our small team, we knew that to meet both fan demand across the country and our own vision to add exponentially to the experiences offered at the Expo, we needed to find the right partners who understood both our goals and the market."

"With their experience both in the pop culture brand building space along with their keen understanding and insight into one of our key targeted demographics, Hispanic families, FanGirl was the perfect fit, "said Kevin Kleinrock, President and COO of Masked Republic.

"The name of the company speaks for itself," comments Anita Castellar, CEO of FanGirl Consulting & Brand Management. "For the fans, by the fans is one of our mottos at FanGirl. Our team is both bi-lingual and bi-cultural. We grew up watching both lucha libre in Spanish and wrestling leagues in English. It's exciting to see many of these stars we grew up watching are now part of the Expo Lucha events and we get to share these experiences with our children. In short, we ARE the target demographic of Expo Lucha."

FanGirl is passionate about celebrating fandom in its various forms, but, specifically, unlocking the business potential behind those fandoms. Their team spends a lot of time immersed in fan conventions executing against the business strategies that make these events so successful. FanGirl is a Hispanic, woman-owned company, and with close to 20 years of experience in the licensing business, tied to brands with the most avid fanbase making this company uniquely qualified to guide Expo Lucha to the next level.

In order to support this new partnership, FanGirl Consulting & Brand Management has created a new division titled FanGirl Expo Services. This new division will identify opportunities on behalf of Expo Lucha for brand partnerships, event sponsorships, and marketing outreach to the Hispanic fan base. Already planned for Expo Lucha: Philadelphia this year are the following activities — a luchador cosplay contest, a competition between action figure customizers which will be judged by the luchadores themselves, panels, and an opening night VIP ticket holder one-man-show with Q&A session with legendary luchador and power broker Konnan, and much more!

Expo Lucha: Philadelphia will take place August 15-16, 2020 at the historic 2300 Arena in Philadelphia, PA. The location was chosen for this year's event specifically to mark the 25th anniversary of the introduction of lucha libre into mainstream wrestling in the U.S. The 1990s lucha libre revolution was born in the 2300 Arena (then known as the ECW Arena) when the first luchadores from Mexico arrived making their mark and changing the face of the industry forever. Icons the likes of Juventud Guerrera, Psychosis and Konnan were part of the initial 1990s debut and will also be a part of the Expo experience this year along with many others. VIP ticket packages are on sale now at ExpoLucha.com. General admission tickets for the wrestling shows on the evenings of August 15th and 16th are on sale now at the 2300 Arena box office and at 2300Arena.com.

- NJPW announced it has opened a new NJPW New Zealand Dojo in Auckland where tryouts will be held on May 9 and 10. NJPW also runs dojos in Japan and Los Angeles.

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