With kung fu kicks and dragon masks, pro wrestlers find new fans at fight night in China

American-style professional wrestling is gaining new fans in China, where Chinese history and music are woven into standard pro wrestling fare.

BEIJING — The music blared and the crowd whooped as Alexis Lee strutted across the stage toward the ring. At just 5 feet tall, the wispy professional wrestler was dwarfed by heftier contenders, so to make her point, she pushed a spectator over in his chair and growled through her skeleton face paint.

The crowd loved it.

“It’s like the circus but with athletics,” Lee, a 30-year-old Singaporean, told NBC News. “So it’s entertaining, and live drama too. It’s just fun.”

While martial arts have a deep history in China, professional wrestling — with its raucous theatrics, shiny tights and body slams — is still fighting for recognition here. But on a recent Saturday night at a live events venue in Beijing, a special six-match bout billed as the “Battle of the Decade” showed how far pro wrestling has come and its potential in the massive Chinese entertainment market.

“People are really starting to take pro wrestling — Chinese pro wrestling — seriously,” said Adrian Gomez, the American founder of Middle Kingdom Wrestling, one of the few pro wrestling organizations in China, and the man of the night.