Maple Leaf Wrestling

Maple Leaf Wrestling (MLW) was a Canadian wrestling territory based in Toronto, Ontario. Jack Corcoran founded the promotion in 1930 by expanding his Queensbury Athletic Club boxing operation into professional wrestling.

He presented the first card at Massey Hall on November 6, 1930, before securing an agreement to hold events at the newly opened Maple Leaf Gardens the following year. The promotion’s first card at the Gardens took place on November 19, 1931, and drew a reported crowd of 15,800.

After Corcoran fell ill with pneumonia and began stepping away from the business in 1939, his longtime employees John and Frank Tunney bought the promotion from him. John had already handled matchmaking for Corcoran, while Frank worked as the Queensbury Athletic Club’s secretary and bookkeeper.

The brothers renamed the promotion Maple Leaf Wrestling, with John taking over as promoter and Frank assuming a larger role in the office. Its territory covered Toronto and Southern Ontario, with events in markets like Hamilton, London, Brantford, Kitchener, Oshawa, St. Catharines, Niagara Falls, and Buffalo.

After John Tunney’s death in 1940, Frank took over operations and ran the office for over 40 years, becoming one of the most respected promoters in the business.

The promotion joined the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) in the late 1940s. Its top local star was Whipper Billy Watson, a two-time world champion and Toronto’s biggest draw in the 1940s and 1950s.

Business was strong during this time. Maple Leaf Gardens had about 308,000 wrestling admissions in 1950. Television coverage started with Wrestling from Maple Leaf Gardens on CBLT in 1953, moved to CFTO in 1962, and continued on CHCH starting in 1968.

In the late 1960s and 1970s, Tunney entered a working partnership with Detroit’s The Sheik (Ed Farhat), whose bloody brawls initially drew huge crowds to the Gardens before his refusal to lose eventually burned out the audience.

During this time, matches regularly featured Gene Kiniski, Billy Red Lyons, Tiger Jeet Singh, Dewey Robertson, and Angelo Mosca, while touring stars like Lou Thesz, Buddy Rogers, Bruno Sammartino, Andre the Giant, and Harley Race also appeared in Toronto.

After 1978, a working relationship with Jim Crockett Promotions (JCP) brought Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Roddy Piper, Greg Valentine, and other Mid-Atlantic wrestlers into the territory. Maple Leaf Wrestling introduced the NWA Canadian Heavyweight Championship in December 1978, which became its top prize, and added the NWA Canadian Television Championship in June 1982.

After Frank Tunney died in 1983, his nephew Jack Tunney and Frank’s son Eddie took over. On June 27, 1984, they decided to leave the NWA when Titan Sports partnered with Tunney Sports and George Scott. The Toronto office then used only WWF talent, ending its independent NWA ties but still promoting events and Canadian TV as Maple Leaf Wrestling.

Toronto officially became a WWF city, Jack Tunney became the on-screen “President” of the WWF, and the Canadian Heavyweight Championship was abandoned.

Television tapings for Maple Leaf Wrestling continued in Brantford and other Southern Ontario cities until 1986. Once those tapings ended, the Maple Leaf Wrestling name was only used for the Canadian version of WWF Superstars of Wrestling, ending its run as an independent promotion.

By then, the territory was fully absorbed into the WWF, with the Tunneys simply promoting WWF events at Maple Leaf Gardens. The final wrestling show at the Gardens was held on September 17, 1995, ending the Tunney family’s 56-year run in Toronto.

The brand lay dormant for nearly four decades until Scott D’Amore, owner of Border City Wrestling and former president of TNA Wrestling, quietly acquired the surviving pre-WWF footage library in 2012.

Following his high-profile exit from TNA, D’Amore filed a trademark for the Maple Leaf Wrestling name on April 14, 2024, and on August 8, 2024, he formally announced the revival of the brand under new ownership as Maple Leaf Pro Wrestling (MLP).

The new promotion debuted with a two-night event (Forged in Excellence) at St. Clair College in Windsor on October 19th and 20th, 2024, positioning itself as the spiritual successor to the Tunney family’s legendary Toronto office.

MLP has since established Canadian men’s, women’s, and tag team championships while working with CMLL and Ring of Honor. The promotion made an emotional return to the former Maple Leaf Gardens (now the Mattamy Athletic Centre) on May 10, 2025, for Northern Rising, where Josh Alexander and Gisele Shaw were crowned the inaugural MLP Canadian Champion and MLP Women’s Canadian Champion in the territory’s historic home.

Today, the promotion continues to run events and television tapings in Ontario, airs MLP Mayhem nationally on TSN2, streams the series internationally through MyAEW, and distributes additional programming through Fight Nation and TrillerTV.