Monday, October 24, 2005

And now for something completely different

The E-Fed Blog has become a magnet, a MAGNET I say, for controversy lately. Not that I'm complaining, I like the attention and the debate, but it's time to slow it down a bit.

Anyway, one of the most fun and just completely unpredictable things to do in the world of RP e-fedding is run a tournament. Of course, this post isn't just coming out here for my health. I won't lie that I am shilling the TEAM Invitational Tournament all over the local e-fed universe (local for me being A1, FW, EWN and PTC), and of course, my own blog is a great place to push my own agenda ;).

Anyway, I love tournaments. Single elimination, round robin, singles, tag, big, small, angle-laden or totally spontaneous. I love them all. There's so much potential for fun matchups if you're going the random RP mode (like this TEAM Invite is, or the Natural Selection tourneys have been), and they can be a very powerful booking tool in any fed.

For now though, I'm going to focus on the random tournaments, the ones you see with people from feds all over the map coming in and just trash-talking to see who moves on and who goes home. To me, there aren't enough of these things going on in the very local e-fed universe. Sure, PTC has the Golden Turnbuckle, but they're an interfed. They've got their own cohesive universe within the giant e-fed universe out there that includes much more than the communities I've mentioned so far. FW and A1 don't have nearly the tournament action.

And that's a shame.

Not that there haven't been attempts. The MBE Cup was successful even though long writing times dragged things down a bit. However, this wasn't an attempt at some random tournament to get guys together. It was to recreate and celebrate MBE's rich heritage and to put feelers out for a fulltime return of the fed. Jeff Pena tried the Fantasy Wrestling Superstar Showcase, but he never got out of the first round of that. Other than those two in recent memory, the tourament scene has been dead.

This is just another symptom, IMO, of an overarching problem in at least the FW and A1 scenes; that of the spontineity of e-fedding being drained. Almost everything is planned weeks, sometimes months in advance. You have to fill out a card to get an angle or a feud with someone, and by the time you get to feud with them, they may have to retire or take a hiatus.

Advance angles and long term feuds can be great if they're well booked. But they shouldn't be the bread and butter of e-feds. They should be maybe the bread, but the butter should always consist of that room, that extra space for each card for one off matches or hot-shot angles between two guys who weren't involved with each other previously but who would provide a fantasy matchup for the marks out there.

And that's what tournaments can provide. Matches without angles and long builds behind them.

Tournaments also can create new stars, or turn hot stars into main eventers. Pushing guys to the next level. I don't know why there are more tournaments.

THere should be a tournament for each quarter of the year. Two singles, two tag tournaments. One of the tag tournaments should be lethal lottery style.

They're so fun. And they're so useful. Tournaments rock.

Especially the TEAM Invitational Tournament ;)

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